The kindness of strangers

There is a reason why we’re in a casino RV park in East St Louis. It’s because on April 25, 1870, a European immigrant, missing the familiar birds of his homeland, released twelve Eurasian Tree Sparrows into Lafayette Park. The sparrow never expanded its range much, but the population survives. This area is still the only place in North America a person can see a Eurasian Tree Sparrow. They look kind of like house sparrows, but the top of their head is rufous instead of gray, and they have white cheek patches with a spot in the middle.

We were kind of heading this way anyway, so we routed ourselves through St Louis. Saturday afternoon, we went to Horseshoe Lake State Park, east of St Louis in Illinois, a place known to have them. We had a very nice birdwalk, saw lot of birds, even saw wood ducks, but no sparrow. We drove to the Southwest part of St Louis to the “Dogtown” neighborhood at dusk. No luck.
Saturday night, reading everything I could find on the internet about locating Eurasian Tree Sparrows, I came across a name and phone number of a guy who knows about them. I called him. He shared several locations we might find the sparrow, then volunteered that if we wanted to make sure we got it, we could just come to his house and look in his yard. They live right there in his neighborhood. That sounded promising! Then he went on to say that since these are birds, he couldn’t guarantee that we’d actually see one, but that anyone coming to his yard to find one had never missed yet. Beyond promising!

A Sunday morning drive back through St Louis to Webster Groves. Flawless directions to his house (His directions had nothing to do with us missing a turn and driving back and forth across the Mississippi River three times.) Within ten minutes of our arrival we had our bird. Several of them. First the fleeting look, just enough to make the call, then the satisfying looks. Poses for pictures. We got to stay and watch them for as long as we wanted. Bird number 511.

Thank you Bill Rowe, for being kind to strangers. (We didn’t meet Bill in person. He was off on his own birding trip by the time we got to his house, so, by his invitation, we wandered his yard and neighborhood unescorted.)