仙台 えいごの教室

  2 years ago, bulbuls¹ made a nest right against the window of my room and we enjoyed every single day watching their babies until they grew up and flew away. (You can read the blogs about them — June 16, 30 and July 17, 2022.)

  Since then, I have been always wishing that some kind of birds would make a nest and raise² their kids around my house again, hopefully really close so that I could watch them every day.

  Finally my dream came true! One day when I was in the kitchen, I heard teeny tiny³ chirping⁴ sound coming through the kitchen vent⁵. The voices were so tiny that I had to stop breathing. It was baby birds’ chirping! I quickly and of course very quietly went out and checked it from a distance. I saw some straws sticking out of the outlet⁶ of the vent. It was a sparrow family’s nest!

  I took this photo from an upstair’s window, hiding myself so I wouldn’t scare the sparrows.

  Then, I started hearing the babies’ chirping every day really clearly in the kitchen. I was able to tell when the papa sparrow or the mama sparrow came because the babies raised the volume of their voices. Of course I issued⁷ the ban⁸ of the use of the kitchen fan! They were in the nest in a tiny hole in the wall outside, just next to the vent, so I didn’t want to scare them by its scary sound.

 

  Then, I also realized some more chirping while I was in my room. I found out that there were 2 more sparrow nests between the gutter and the roof of our neighbor’s house. Since my room faces the roof of the neighbor’s house, I was always able to see the parents coming and going out of the nest and hear the babies’ chirping, sometimes I even saw babies shooting out⁸ of the nest.

  I had such fun days, maybe for 2 weeks?, hearing their activities literally⁹ all the time. A few days ago, I stopped hearing them. I guess they flew away.

  When I look at the spots where they were, I still hear their chirping in my mind and I pray that they live safe and sound¹⁰ …

  * I read an article that said recently the number of sparrows is decreasing because there are not so many spots where they can nest. There are not so many wooden houses in the old style. I hope that we can think about the way to live with the living creatures around us.