Special Providence

"Not a whit, we defy augury: 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 has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 5, scene 2

I love sparrows. Perhaps it seems odd, next to my love of rainbow lorikeets, but they're one of my favourite birds. I noted with some interest on Wikipedia that the house sparrow is the type species of the passerines - which includes 5,000 species, over half the species of extant dinosaurs.

Anyhow, I love sparrows. I've wanted - pretty much since I started this journal - to get a good photo of a sparrow. I've always been foiled by their speed, and flittyness. This little fellow, however, was most obliging, and made me most happy. I think he might be one of a pair that are nesting inside a hollow beam supporting the roof of the walkway from shopping mall to carpark in Penrith. I'd seen him (if it is him) previously going in there to welcoming chirps.

I cropped to 3:2 and enlarged it a little, sharpened a bit, raised the luminance on his eye, and then zoomed right in, and painted on some way-increased brightness just to the little reflected bits of light in his eye.

Unprocessed version uploaded shortly...

Large version here.