I love sparrows. They have subtle beauty with the lovely shades of fall. If you look carefully at a sparrow, you can see lines of russet or gray, beige or maroon, black or cinnamon, caramel or cream.

Many sparrows have been coming to the feeder at Fields Pond Audubon Center, but I hadn’t gotten large flocks of sparrows at home for a number of years. I stopped feeding sparrows due to neighborhood cats.

It was time to get the sparrows back. I bought a large bag of millet and put it in a rodent-proof container. I put about 2 cups of millet in a tin can and went to the bushes on the edge of the lawn. I sprinkled the millet under the bushes.

Then I sprinkled the millet in a swath a yard wide to a part of the lawn where I could easily see the sparrows. I then sprinkled the millet in a circle about 10 feet across.

I did this on a weekend when I could be home. I wanted to observe what happened, see the first sparrows and take steps if a neighborhood cat hid in the bushes where I had spread the millet.

The second day I had a wonderful flock of a dozen white-throated sparrows. I was thrilled. They ate all the millet under the bushes. I kept putting more millet out in the “millet circle” on the lawn, but not under the bushes, nor on the trail from the bushes.

More and more white-throated sparrows came, sometimes up to 30. They were accompanied by 20 lovely juncos, and five beautiful white-crowned sparrows. I reveled in my sparrows.

Then the ultimate reward arrived – a majestic fox sparrow. It dwarfed the other sparrows. It landed in the middle of the flock and stood for a while, looking around. Then it started to feed, using the “double-scratching” method of the larger sparrows.

This method involves staying in one place and quickly moving both feet forward, then sweeping them backward, kicking leaves out from under the bird, and enabling it to spot seeds and insects underneath.

I watched it for some time, enjoying its graceful movements. I also enjoyed its subtle beauty – bright reddish brown contrasting with gray and white.

My hope is that my sparrows will keep coming, and always from different routes in the bushes, so a cat won’t know where to hide and pounce.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.