This gathering of sparrows, apparently seeking the fellowship of their own kind as solace against the rigors of winter, struck us as an apt metaphor for contentious times, and made us wonder whether humans couldn’t learn something from the example of feathered friendship.
This, in turn, made us curious about the collective name for a flock of sparrows. A gathering of crows, for example, is called a “murder,” while a congregation of owls is called a “parliament.” So what is the name for the group above? It turns that a flock of this species is called, “a quarrel of sparrows.”
With smug cynicism, we thus reflected that maybe human beings have already learned quite a bit from these, the most familiar of all the world’s birds. But then we remembered that Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend, “I hope you love birds, too. It’s economical. It saves going to heaven.” Thus chastened, we acknowledged that perhaps there is yet more to learn. And then they flew away…