C. Russell

“ My object in letting no sparrows live about my house, buildings, and garden has been not only to protect the martins (perhaps it would be enough for this to kill those sparrows only which go near their nests) , but also to get a better test of the utility of sparrows than could otherwise be got by any amount of examination of the food in them. My place is a fair specimen of the country, having flower and kitchen gardens, shrubberies, and small orchard, surrounded by meadows, with cornfields within easy reach all round. All birds except sparrows have been let alone there. ”

“ The food of young sparrows was found to vary greatly; of those taken at the same time from one farmyard, some broods contained insects, some corn, green or ripe, or green peas, and a few green seeds, chiefly of grass, and in many would be a mixture of some or all these. The kind of food by no means always depends on the age of the birds; the first food after being hatched given to a young sparrow is commonly a small green caterpillar, but large callow ones a few days old are often full of ripe wheat, and some ready to fly contain insects chiefly. ”

“ In the part where I live, after a stack has been thrashed out, the straw is taken away a little at a time, each removal exposing a lot of waste corn which, with what they pick up on the roads, supports a dense shoal of sparrows for weeks or months. In many ways, too, the increase of population and wealth in the country promotes the increase of sparrows by supplying them with food, waste or otherwise, in the worst times for them—that is, when there is least corn about—worst of all, when the ground is covered with snow. ”

“ If the finches have taken any green peas at all, they have not done so to a noticeable extent. The greenfinches and chaffinches are so numerous in my garden that they would eat every seed of cabbage, radish, and other cruciferæ, were the seed-beds not netted; if a net anywhere lies on the ground, scarcely a seed escapes them there. They often get under the nets and cannot find their way out, so there is no doubt as to what birds eat these seeds. I believe that sparrows will eat the seeds of some, at least, of the cruciferæ, when sprouting, but in this respect the finches are as bad or worse. ”

“ A few hints derived from long experience may be useful to any one who wishes to investigate the food of sparrows himself. To examine the food in an old sparrow the best plan is, if anything can be felt in it, to take out the gullet. ”

“ A few town sparrows which I have examined, had little in them beside corn, much of which they get where fowls and pigeons are fed; they get also unbitten oats and some grass-seeds from horse-droppings in the streets, as well as a good deal of bread-crumbs and other waste in towns. Sparrows leave towns and villages for a while, and go to the fields when plenty of corn is to be got there. At spring seed-time I have seen a great crowd of sparrows along the hedge of a newly sowed field near a small town. I believe that most of the London sparrows go out of town at harvest-time. ”

“ Though originally a warm-country bird and sensitive to cold, the sparrow knows but too well how to take care of himself here, and, from his habits and knowledge where best to find food at bad times, is much less liable to starvation in frosty and snowy weather than other birds. In the three severe winters, 1878-81, the ranks of most common birds were so much thinned that it has taken three or four mild winters to restore them to their usual numbers, while the sparrows, so far as I saw, did not become sensibly fewer. ”

“ When a few sparrows, avoiding the buildings, try to live in the trees, the fowls' food soon lures them to their fate.
It seems to me that the numbers of sparrows have long been and still are greatly increasing, till they have become in many parts a serious evil to the farmer. The reasons for this increase are plain enough; sparrows breed very fast; I know not how many times in the year, but many of them lay soon after April 20: they nest all through May, June, and July, and a few have come to build in my martins' nests in the first half of August. ”

“ But the numbers of any wild creature depend less on its natural rate of increase than on checks, the chief being the want of food at the worst times, especially in the case of domestic parasites like rats, mice, and sparrows. These have no natural enemies in the way of wild birds or beasts of prey to thin their numbers to any extent; consequently they must be kept down by man, or they will only be limited by starvation, and will always increase up to the point which the lowest period of food supply will allow. ”

“ Yet the martins are no doubt the most desirable birds to have about our houses, even apart from their utility. They are less graceful in their flight than swallows, but their far greater numbers where they can keep their nests, their habit of nesting and flying in company and generally higher, and their bright black and pure white plumage, make them a better feature in the view, and from April to October they show far more life in the air near houses than all the rest of the birds put together. To any one used to see them, a place looks dull in summer without martins. ”

“ On the whole, the deduction from the food test during fifteen years seems to be that the sparrows are useless, and that the insects which would be given to their young by them if they were allowed to live in numbers about my premises would be so much food taken, when they most want it, from better birds which live entirely, or nearly so, on insects, and thus keep them, especially caterpillars, down so effectively in the absence of sparrows that, when a chance pair of these come and build, there are few of their favourite sorts for them. ”

“ Where plenty of corn can be had for the greater part of the year, they will make shift for a short time with wild seeds or insects; but where there is never any corn there are no sparrows, and where there is little of it but few. Not many are to be seen in moorland countries where corn is not grown. I heard some years ago that at Mauritius, where they had been introduced, no corn being grown in the island, the sparrows kept to the towns and did not go into the country.
Of ripe corn, sparrows prefer wheat to oats, and oats to barley ”

“ Those who, wishing to destroy sparrows, shoot also every other small bird they come across, thinking them all much the same, kill out all the other sorts before they can thin the numbers of the sparrows to any extent, so much more cunning are these. If stories about the ill-effects of killing sparrows have any foundation in fact, these ill-effects were doubtless due to killing the useful birds as well. ”

“ It would be against common sense to suppose that all the buds on a number of bushes held insects except those near the ends of the shoots, and that none of these held one (they always grow well enough) . When the birds have been budding the bushes, and the few buds left burst into leaf, besides those at the ends, here and there one does so on the stripped parts, and perhaps nine times out of ten the reason of its being left is plain—the bud contained no flower. ”

“ Sparrows killed just before they go to roost mostly have their crops full; their digestion is quick, and little or nothing is likely to be found in the crops of those caught at night at roost, or shot in the morning. The food goes a little at a time into the gizzards of old sparrows, and is there soon too much ground up to be worth examining; but in the crops the most delicate insect, if there, can be detected. ”

“ English cottagers generally feel kindly towards the martins, but cannot protect them from the sparrows. Well-to-do people will not let them build about their windows or often even on their houses, and the sparrows will not let them keep a nest on their out-buildings, so there are no martins about them to become acquainted with. The disappearance of the martins is a loss really of national importance, and it is much to be wished that some colonies of them should be encouraged, that people might see what they are like. ”

“ In gardens sparrows do much mischief, as by feeding off young peas, eating green peas from the pods, stripping gooseberry bushes of their fruit-buds, destroying flowers, etc. The question remains whether they do good enough in gardens to make up for such misdeeds. Now, to prove that sparrows are really useful, it is not enough to show that they destroy some injurious insects; it must also be proved that, in their absence, other birds would not destroy them, at least as effectually. ”

“ The sparrow seems to be 'a parasite on civilization' which has followed the cultivation of wheat from warmer countries (his rising later and roosting earlier than other birds, in the warmest places he can find, point to this) , and living and sleeping in the fields does not suit him unless in warm weather; so cold, as well as want of corn, may have something to do with driving him home. ”

“ Now people generally do not destroy sparrows, or even take their nests to any extent, less I think than formerly, some because they do not care to take the trouble, others because they are deceived by what they read about 'sparrows and other small birds.' Many things keep increasing the food-supply of sparrows at bad times; perhaps the chief thing is the greater number of horses used and oats given them, and consequent increase of food for them on the roads at all times of the year. ”

“ The destruction of corn by sparrows is very great, but varies so much in different places that I cannot pretend to guess the proportion of the whole corn crop of the country to which it amounts. The mischief is greatest near towns and villages. As an instance, a friend who, a few years back, had four acres of barley close to the village of Writtle, near Chelmsford, told me that the sparrows devoured the whole crop, not leaving a grain. ”

“ Swallows' nests are infested by a very similar parasite, but larger and of a darker colour, also perfectly harmless to man. These must often fall from the nests down the chimneys, but are never found living in a house; fortunately for the swallows, their nests are where people cannot see these parasites about them, and the swallows' reputation is not damaged.
A few words may here not be out of place about the effect on the number of other birds of the absence of sparrows from my place, and of the consequent abundance of martins. ”

“ Although sparrows feed greedily on green corn, yet while feeding on it they always like to get some ripe corn for a change, and will then go a long way to any place where old wheat can be got, as where straw with a little waste grain in it has been put down in a yard, or a haystack has been thatched with it. They will also turn over horse-droppings for unbitten oats in a road alongside a field of green corn which they are feeding on. ”

“ Flycatchers, which live on flying insects, and wagtails and redstarts, which do so to a great extent, are at least as numerous here as I ever saw them anywhere. Some of the wilder birds, as the ring-dove, stock-dove and turtle-dove, always breed near the house, and are not disturbed by shooting the sparrows, having quite sense enough to disregard noise which does them no harm. I may here remark that the sparrows are not often shot in the trees ”

“ In seasons when much rain spoils the corn on the stubbles early, and the weather keeps warm, some of the sparrows which have made the fields their home ever since they flew from the nest may perhaps stay in them longer after the grain is all spoilt, and eat more wild seeds than in drier and colder seasons. ”

“ This house is in the middle of a park; probably the sparrows do not care to live there because no corn is to be had near enough to please them.
The martins, which feed exclusively on insects, if left in possession of their nests, would, unlike many other birds, increase with the population of the country and number of houses. Besides the persecution by sparrows, there is no condition unfavourable to the martins except that when, with their natural confidence in man, too often misplaced, they make their nests close to windows or doors for protection, people commonly destroy them ”

“ Speaking broadly, it may be said that, unless very near houses and roads, sparrows take no insects in the fields. If they did any good to the farmer in this way, the land near their haunts would be worth more per acre to cultivate than the enormously greater extent of ground where sparrows never take an insect. But this is not the case. The greater ravages they commit on the corn are the only noticeable effects produced by sparrows on land near places always frequented by them. ”

“ I once shot one on a cherry-tree full to the mouth with its buds; these were nicely shelled to the part which would open into the bunches of flowers, looking something like little cauliflower heads, and showing the little blossom buds. Bullfinches, however, did not do the rapid budding already mentioned; they are rather scarce here, and come one at a time—sometimes not at all during a whole winter—and one or two could not do nearly so much work in the time. We know well enough what they do; when they come they stop, and are sure to be seen before long. ”

“ If people everywhere could be induced to take interest in the preservation of martins, farmers and gardeners would derive great benefit, not only from the good which these birds would do them, but even more from the lessening of the numbers of sparrows which would ensue, seeing that martins cannot be kept without killing the sparrows. ”

“ No birds are more amiable and kindly among themselves, or show more confidence in man. The habits of none are more interesting or more easily observed. It seems strange that people do not see all this, and the cruel persecution of martins by sparrows, which will often pull small young martins from their nests and drop them on the ground—or, seeing this persecution, can feel towards the sparrows otherwise than they would towards rats, if seen constantly carrying off young chickens. ”

“ Sparrows like green barley, and it is often the first corn they can find in neighbouring fields forward enough to eat; they will then stick to it till it becomes too hard to shell well, when they leave it for the wheat. Some farmers in Norfolk sow a narrow strip of oats at that side of a wheat-field from which the sparrows are expected to come; the oats, being ready for them earlier than the wheat, keep them occupied and save the wheat for some time. ”