Page:HouseSparrowGurney.djvu/15

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

THE HOUSE SPARROW,

By an Ornithologist,

J. H. GURNEY, Junr.




THE common house sparrow (Passer domesticus; fringillidæ, the finch tribe) has some enthusiastic patrons in this country among the friends of dumb animals, and it has many deadly enemies among farmers and gardeners. I do not propose to enter into the charges brought against it by gardeners,[1] so much as to treat the question from a farmer's point of view.

No one can for a moment doubt that the sparrow question is now a very important one, and that it is becoming, year by year, more so; that is, if only a tithe of what has been said and written about it at farmers' clubs and in agricultural newspapers be true. A large farmer in Cheshire told his audience at a meeting last year that in his opinion sparrows, assisted by other small birds, had done the country £770,094 worth of damage in a year, reckoning a bushel per acre all over the kingdom (vide The Times, Sept. 13th, 1884, Chester Courant, Aug. 27th). If this tremendous estimate be anywhere near the mark

  1. Besides eating peas frequently and gooseberries occasionally, sparrows have an evil propensity for picking flowers to pieces, including the crocus, dahlia, polyanthus, hepatica, heartsease, and wistaria.