English Sparrow SONG-BIRDS.
English Sparrow: Passer domesttcmh House Sparrow; Gamin, Tramp, Hoodlum. (Cones)
Lenth : 5 inches.
Male and Female: Ashy above, shoulders and back striped with black and chestnut. Dark chestnut mark over eye and on sides of neck. Chestnut and white bar on wings, bordered by a black line; tail gray. Bill blue-black; feet brown. Female paler ; wing bars indistinct.
Song : A harsh chirp.
Season : A persistent resident.
Breeds: Everywhere in towns and in villages.
Nest: Rough, and loosely made of straws, sticks, or any material which circumstances offer.
Eggs: 4-8, greenish white, speckled with chocolate and lavender.
Range: Eastern United States. Introduced about twenty years ago into the United States, where it has become naturalized in nearly all inhabited districts.
This unfortunate Sparrow, bearing a load of opprobrium which he deserves, though largely through no fault of his own, has for some time been furnishing an avi-social prob- lem to both England and America. In the first-named country, even the investigation of a special committee of the House of Commons has failed to ascertain, with any- thing approaching certainty, whether this Sparrow’s services as an insectdestroyer equal his own destructive qualities.
In Australia, it is said that the fifty birds originally im- ported now flock by millions, and make the third of the triad of emigrants with which unthinking people have‘ scourged the country, the other two being rabbits and the Scotch thistle.
Here in America, the Sparrow is an absolute and unmiti- gated nuisance, but for this, the unwise and superficial theory that brought him over is chiefly to blame. No thought was given to the change of habits that the change of climate might effect in the bird’s whole nature. A par- tial insect—eater, at home, though of a seed—eating family, brought here to free the trees from canker-worms, he,
instead, relapsed soon after, and became a rigid seed-eater. . 136 '
