Hedge sparrow

“ The hedge sparrow is found in all parts of England; has a pleasing song, which it begins with the new year, if the weather is mild; breeds early, making a nest in March, composed of green moss and wool, and lined with hair, which is placed in some low evergreen shrub, thick brush, or cut hedge; frequently builds in faggot piles. The eggs are four or five in number, blue; their weight about twenty-eight grains.
This bird is one of the few of the warbler tribe that remains with us the whole year. The food is insects and worms ”

“ In the hedge itself a hedge-sparrow just once lets loose its frail dewy song, a nightingale utters one phrase of marvelling and is still. The musky wild roses star all the hedge and the scent begins to wander in the moist air with the scent of honeysuckle and of shadowy grasses. Under a now misted sky that makes the light seem to dwell no longer in it but in the grass, the flat, yellow field running to the little wood is a place impregnable and inaccessible. ”

“ And so it is with the Hedge Sparrow; year in, year out, he is ever with us, quietly and diligently seeking his food along a hedge bottom, on the edge of a coppice, on the garden path, or wherever else he may happen to find himself. He does incalculable good in destroying numbers of noxious insects, and when winter comes, and such food is scarce, he turns his attention to seeds of all kinds, thus 68 helping to keep down many weeds which would otherwise overrun our fields and gardens. ”

“ On the pollard willows the long wands are yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of sunshine, the first colour of spring appears in their bark. The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow and rise; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks in the sun the same now as in summer; it lifts and swings the arching trail of bramble; it dries and crumbles the earth in its fingers; the hedge-sparrow's feathers are fluttered as he sings on the bush. ”

“ The hedge-sparrow, unlike his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a yard.
In the thatch—under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable—the wren has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush ”

“ The Hedge Sparrow makes her nest of slender twigs, in limited numbers—sometimes these are not employed at all—rootlets, dead grass, and moss, with an inner lining of wool, hair, and feathers. The lining frequently consists of no other materials than moss and cowhair. ”

“ This time it creeps from the extremity of a branch towards the hole of the tree, equally at ease whatever may chance to be its position, and no more affected by [Pg 45] gravity than a fly. Arrived at the main stem it keeps on its course, still advancing by starts, and accompanying every movement, as, indeed, it has been doing all along, by an almost imperceptible twinkling of its wings, something like that which has gained for the Hedge Sparrow the sobriquet of 'Shuffle-wing'. ”

“ They love to linger many days in the stubble; and when bird music is rare, their occasional songs are precious to the ear. If the field is approached softly there seems to be no life hidden in its midst, but suddenly wings whirr noisily, and bird after bird flies up into the neighboring trees and bushes. Sparrows love fences, stone walls, and their accompanying growths of berry-bushes and small trees. The latter are our New England substitutes for the hedgerows of the Old World, and I believe the sparrow tribe takes as much comfort in wall and briers as in hedge and ditch. ”

“ Their little beady eyes notice my every motion, and they show off by bullying and chasing the hedge sparrows we meet in our walk, seeming to say: “Get out of our way, you disrespectful birds. Don’t you see the Mistress out for a walk?” The poor little hedge sparrows hurry and scurry to the nearest tree, cocking their tiny heads to one side, as if saying: “Why all this excitement? She’s not so much!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ These seeds will spread from a hedge, the sides of which are not brushed with a reaping-hook in the summer, and make a field very foul; so that everyone must admit that sparrows and small birds generally do some amount of good by keeping them down. ”

“ Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings: and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Red-breasts and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and files that have laid themselves up during the cold season. ”

“ I was amused—no longer amazed—at finding the sparrows here. The seed of these birds shall possess the earth. Is there even now a spot into which the bumptious, mannerless, ubiquitous little pleb has not pushed himself? If you look for him in the rain-pipes of the Fifth Avenue mansions, he is there; if you search for him in the middle of the wide, silent salt-marsh, he is there; if you take—but it is vain to take the wings of the morning, or of anything else, in the hope of flying to a spot where the stumpy little wings of the English sparrow have not already carried him. ”

“ They settle in the open fields and along railroad tracks, where they secure some food from hayseed, grain that has sifted out of the grain cars, and seeds of weeds that grow along the tracks. Here they remain until April, when, in obedience to the migrating instinct, they journey north to nest on the treeless plains of the arctic regions.
“The snowflake differs from many other winter sparrows, such as the tree sparrow, junco, and white-throated sparrow, in that its flocks act more nearly as units, the alarm of a single member causing the whole flock to whirl up into the air and be off. ”

“ While the neighbourly song sparrow and the swamp sparrow delight to be near water, the field sparrow chooses to live in dry uplands where stunted bushes and cedars cover the hills and overgrown old fields, and towhees and brown thrashers keep him company. He is not fond of human society, however, and usually flies away with wavering, uncertain flight from bush to bush rather than submit to a close scrutiny of his bright chestnut brown back and crown, flesh-coloured bill, gray eyebrow, grayish throat, buffy breast and light feet. ”

“ Among the least conspicuous birds, sparrows are the easiest to classify for that very reason, and certain prominent features of the half dozen commonest of the tribe make their identification simple even to the merest novice. The distinguishing marks of this sparrow that haunts open, breezy pasture lands and country waysides are its bright, reddish-brown wing coverts, prominent among its dingy, pale brownish-gray feathers, and its white tail-quills, shown as the bird flies along the road ahead of you to light upon the fence-rail. ”

“ One evening we notice the juncos and tree sparrows in the tangled, frost-burned stubble, and the next day, although our eye catches glints of white from sparrow tails, it is from vesper finches, not from juncos, and the weed spray which a few hours before bent beneath a white-throat’s weight, now vibrates with the energy which a field sparrow puts into his song. Field and chipping sparrows, which now come in numbers, are somewhat alike, but by their beaks and songs you may know them. ”

“ Every roadside and field has its sparrows—brown, streaked birds which usually keep near the ground and feed upon the seeds of grasses and weeds, yet pick up innumerable insects, as do all the others of their busy tribe. These sparrows make their nests mostly on the ground; but most of the finches, rightly so called, nest in bushes and trees. All the sparrows have pleasant voices, and most of them are fair singers, while some excel in that accomplishment. Our song-sparrow, fox-sparrow, the whitethroat and others are among the best of American singing birds. ”

“ At a certain hour in the Tuilleries Gardens, you may see a man perfectly surrounded with a crowd of sparrows—some perching on his shoulder; some fluttering in the air immediately before his face; some on the ground like a tribe of followers; and others on the marble seats. He jerks a crumb of bread into the air—a sparrow dexterously seizes it as he would a flying insect; he puts a crumb between his lips—a sparrow takes it out and feeds from his mouth. Meantime they keep up a constant chirping; those that are satisfied still stay by and adjust their feathers. ”

“ I used to think that they were all quarreling with that one bird; but no, they follow her because they admire and like her. Some people scold a great deal about the harm that the sparrows do to the fruit and grain. But think of the many insects that these birds eat in one year! I believe they do more good than harm, don’t you?
The chipping sparrow often builds its nest in tall trees. This is the only sparrow I know of, which builds its nest up high. This bird is smaller than the English sparrow. It has a reddish-brown back and crown. Did you ever hear its funny little song? ”

“ Like other sparrows they chirp and twitter from time to time, but the full chorus of a flock in winter is a sound worth going far to hear.” [21]
Dr. Judd says: “The tree sparrow breeds in Labrador and the Hudson Bay region and westward to Alaska. In the fall the birds come down from the north in immense throngs and spread over the United States as far south as South Carolina, Kansas, and Arizona. During the winter, in company with juncos, white-throats, white-crowns, and fox sparrows, they give life to the hedgerows, tangled thickets, and weed patches.... ”

“ Without going further into the detail of sparrows' food, the question whether they are or not, on the whole, useful to the farmer by destroying insects can, I think, easily be decided. They seldom go far from houses and roads into the fields except when they can get corn there, and then for the sole purpose of eating it, as the contents of their crops prove. Going through the fields in May and June, when most insects are given to their young, I seldom see a sparrow much more than a hundred yards from a house or road. ”

“ The savanna, the swamp, the sharp-tailed, and the song sparrows may all sometimes be found in the haunts of the seaside sparrow, but you may be certain of finding the latter nowhere else than in the salt marshes within sight or sound of the sea. It is a dingy little bird, with the least definite coloring of all the sparrows that have maritime inclinations, with no rufous tint in its feathers, and less distinct streakings on the breast than any of them. It has no black markings on the back.
Good-sized flocks of seaside sparrows live together in the marshes ”

“ Make a long and careful study of the sparrows that nest about you. If you live in the country try to drive them away from the bluebird house and the martin-boxes. The author does not advise boys and girls to do any killing, but carefully pulling down a sparrow’s nest with eggs in it—if you are sure it is a sparrow’s nest—is kindness, he believes, to the other, more useful birds. Yet only yesterday, August 17th, he saw a male sparrow bring moth after moth to its young in a hole in one of the timbers of a bridge from which the author was fishing. ”

“ The traveler along the country roads disturbs them earthing their wings in the soft dry earth, or sees them skulking and flitting along the fences in front of him. They run in the furrow in advance of the team, or perch upon the stones a few rods off. They sing much after sundown, hence the aptness of the name vesper sparrow, which a recent writer, Wilson Flagg, has bestowed upon them.
In the meadows and low, wet lands the savanna sparrow is met with, and may be known by its fine, insect-like song; in the swamp, the swamp sparrow. ”

“ The sparrows are comparatively small gray and brown birds with striped upper parts, lighter underneath. Birds of the ground, or not far from it, elevated perches being chosen for rest and song. Nest in low bushes or on the ground. (Chipping sparrow often selects tall trees.) Coloring adapted to grassy, dusty habitats. Males and females similar. Flight labored. About forty species of sparrows are found in the United States; of these, fourteen may be met with by a novice, and six, at least, surely will be. ”

“ Birds that build at the end of the branch, like the oriole, tie the nest fast; others, like the robin, build against the main trunk; still others build securely in the fork. The sparrow, in her ignorance, rested her house upon the spray of two branches, and when the tempest came, the branches parted company and the nest was engulfed.
A little bob-tailed song sparrow built her nest in a pile of dry brush very near the kitchen door of a farmhouse on the skirts of the northern Catskills, where I was passing the summer. ”