64. Kenya Rufus Sparrow There is something humble about these birds, even about their name: sparrows. While city-living sparrows often seem cocky, argumentative and even rowdy, these good-living rural sparrows, like the Kenya Rufous Sparrow, are polite, tidy and unassuming, even when they come into town. They’ve got a job to do and they get on with it. Their niceness can make them vulnerable, and they are known as hosts of one of the parasitic cuckoos; they can be lumbered with raising a fat, greedy and ungrateful cuckoo chick. They are one of the few birds mentioned in the bible (others are the hoopoe, eagle, vulture, kite, hawk, raven, owl, cormorant, stork, heron and even bat – which is not a bird at all). “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus once said, “for you are worth more than many sparrows” (Mt 10:31). If he meant by this that sparrows, perhaps because they’re very numerous and easy to come by, are not worth very much, then he was not saying anything particularly encouraging, was he? I’d like to think, therefore, that what he meant was that every sparrow is worth a great deal, and that we are worth a great deal more than many of them. Birds of AFRICAMA House 132 Birds of AFRICAMA House 133