Figure 1 – English Sparrow, Passer domesticus, Concord, MA 5/25/2014. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

After all this time carrying my big lens around in hopes of getting good bird pictures, I was delighted this past Sunday when a English Sparrow (Passer domesticus) landed on a branch in front of me and in a sweet voice demanded to have his portrait taken.  I only had my EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens*, but was really delighted by the bifurcated lichen covered branch and at 200 mm at the soft bokeh of the background.

Yes, it is a common house or English Sparrow.  Still he has his own high highfaluting Latin name and as Shakespeare eternally reminds us:

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

*EF70-200mm f/4L USM Lens at 200 mm Aperture priority mode AE, ISO 800, 1/800th second at f/5.6.