House sparrow

“ 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. ”

“ The harshest cries of our native American birds, if not always musical in themselves, seem at least to accord in some way with sounds of nature. The house-sparrow alone is entirely discordant—the one bird without a pleasing note, whose very love-song is an unmusical squeak. ”

“ Action of some kind seems always essential to vocal effort; and the way he erects almost every feather, or sways about or stands in some grotesque attitude, during his periods of song is most entertaining. The House Sparrow is another familiar bird of the farm and garden. Unfortunately he is far too common for most farmers, especially in the vicinity of large towns and villages ”

“ School-children come trooping in, and share their luncheon with them, and even idle and ragged loungers on the park benches draw crusts of bread from their pockets, and throw the sparrows a portion of their own scanty dinner.
It is very easy to study the habits of the sparrow, for it is so bold and sociable that if a little house is nailed up in a balcony, or by a window where people are constantly sitting, a pair of birds will at once take possession, bring twigs and bits of scattered threads and wool for a nest, and proceed to rear their noisy little family. ”

“ Now that the enormous increase and rapid dispersion of the European house-sparrow in America have resulted in the appearance of this objectionable bird in various portions of the Western States and Territories, it is time to consider what means may be taken to check its westward extension; for the agriculturists of that portion of our country have already enough to do to contend with the grasshopper scourge, without having to guard their crops against a plague only less formidable and imminent. ”

“ Almost universally condemned after its introduction into the United States, the house sparrow not only held its own, but increased in numbers and extended its range. It now occupies its own niche and is regarded with amusement and considerable affection in our inner cities.
In rural areas it does some damage to fruit, vegetables, and grain. On the other hand, it also eats a number of insects that damage those same crops.
24
HOUSE WREN
(Troglodytes aedon)
Less than 5 inches long, this tiny bird seems to live right at home with a man-made house. ”

“ The Sparrows pitched all the old nest out of doors and began quarrelling with each other about building their own. They always quarrelled. Indeed, that was the way in which they had courted each other. Mrs. Sparrow had two lovers, and she married the one who would stand the worst pecking from her. “For,” she said, “what is the use of having a husband unless you can beat him when you fight with him?”
Now they stuffed the dainty little bird-house full of straws, sticks, feathers, and anything they could find, until there was hardly room left in which to turn around. ”

“ Female. Duller of color, and lacking the black of face and throat; breast and abdomen reddish-ash; cheeks ashy; a yellow-ochre band above and behind the eyes, and across the wings. Head and neck above brownish-ash; body above reddish-ash, streaked longitudinally with black.
Male in winter. The colors generally less distinct. Length, 6.00; wing, 2.85; tail, 2.50; tarsus, .70; middle toe and claw, .60.
The House Sparrow of Europe has been introduced into so many parts of the United States as to render it probable that at no distant day it will have become one of our most familiar species. ”

“ The pugnacious habits of this species are common in a great degree to the whole family of Sparrows. Like the most daring, the Common House Sparrow of Europe, they may be observed in spring time, in little groups of four, five or six, fighting together, moving round each other to secure an advantageous position, pecking and pulling at each other's feathers with all the violence and animosity to which their small degree of strength can give effect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, it has been introduced to several of the large towns of North America and to many of the British colonies, in nearly all of which, as had been foreseen by ornithologists, it has multiplied to excess and has become an intolerable nuisance, being unrestrained by the natural checks which partly restrict its increase in Europe and Asia. Whether indeed in the older seats of civilization the house-sparrow is not decidedly injurious to the agriculturist and horticulturist has long been a matter of discussion, and no definite result that a fair judge can accept has yet been reached. ”

“ One of the most familiar habits of this graceless bird is his delight in a mob. No sooner does anything occur to disturb the even tenor of sparrow life, whether a domestic skirmish, the first outing of a young family, or some danger to a nest, than a crowd collects, not only as interested spectators, but quite ready and willing to take a hand in any sport or crime that is going ”

“ Many townspeople like sparrows, thinking that they are the only birds which will live in towns. They do not seem to know that if there were no sparrows, they would have, instead of them, plenty of martins, as much pleasanter to look at as squirrels are than rats. White, in his 'Natural History of Selborne,' said, 'There are few towns or large villages but what abound with house-martins.' The sparrows persecuted them badly in his time, and he had had them shot when they deprived his martins of their nests. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is freely admitted that the damage done to growing crops is often enormous, but as yet the service frequently rendered by the destruction of insect-pests cannot be calculated. In the south of Europe the house-sparrow is in some measure replaced by two allied species, P. hispaniolensis and P. italiae, whose habits are essentially identical with its own; and it is doubtful whether the sparrow of India, P. indicus, is specifically distinct; but Africa has several members of the genus which are decidedly so. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having settled in their own minds that it is a mistake to destroy any small birds, and forgetful of the warnings which come to us from the United States and New Zealand, and every colony where the sparrow has been introduced, they shut their eyes to its misdeeds, and will only look at its merits. ”

“ As I said, the sparrow is a domestic tyrant, brooking no opposition. I have never observed a case in which the hen had her own way. He is so great a bully, so self-willed and violent, that whatever the cause of disagreement, he holds out with dogged obstinacy till he gets his will. In one case there was difference of opinion as to the site for a nest; he wishing to occupy an empty cottage of man's providing, while she, with finer instinct, had decided upon a charming crotch in an evergreen tree. ”

“ It would perhaps be more accurate to say, were they not crowded and elbowed out of the way; the impress made by the sturdy little foreign vulgarians upon the native population being effected rather by their numbers, their persistency, turbulence, and noisiness, than by their pugnacity or aggressiveness; though downright acts of hostility may be continually witnessed. In fine, there is not food and room enough for many other birds where sparrows are numerous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Corinthian column with comely leaves in its capital seems especially designed for the comfort of the sparrow, and his distinctly untidy nest is the familiar disfigurement of almost every ornate public building. These are the advantages which come to [Pg 71] the sparrow from his willingness to associate with man, and there are comparatively few birds with whom he must share them. Few birds select the immediate neighborhood of man's home for their nests. They may live in the neighboring trees, they may haunt his orchard, but his house, for the most part, they decline to frequent. ”

“ It is now four or five days since the crime was committed, and although the new spouse is perfectly at home and settled, peace, even to the extent that a sparrow enjoys it, is still a stranger to the spruce-tree nest. I think it is haunted by the discarded mate. Certainly a sparrow, that I have no doubt is she, comes to the neighbourhood, and scolds the meek-looking bride and her spouse in most savage fashion. No one resents her performance, and after a moment she goes away.
The sparrow is an autocrat, especially addicted to divorcing his partner upon the smallest pretext. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The sparrows do not move more than they can help, and peck with the utmost rapidity, as though absolutely starving.
I suppose one ought to pity a “frozen out” sparrow as much as any other bird, but I could wish there were fewer of them at these times when one wishes to befriend the rarer kinds of the birds, and, if it were possible, reserve the food mainly for them instead of the plebeian sparrows.
The kind of provision I find best and most suitable for all tastes is coarsely ground oatmeal, Indian corn, hemp-seed, sultana raisins, chopped-up fat of any kind, and boiled liver cut up finely. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sparrow, on the contrary, would just as lief place his nest near a house as on it. He will build in a disused chimney, or a gutter, or rain-pipe; but if none of these places suit his fancy, he will establish his nest in the ivy covered wall near at hand, or in a clump of bushes, and, having so built, he proceeds to get at once benefit and amusement from his human neighbours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If houses are not provided, the sparrow will build in any odd corner—a chink in the wall or in the nooks and eaves of buildings. A pair of London sparrows once made their nest in the mouth of the bronze lion over Northumberland House, at Charing Cross. They are very much attached to their nest, and after the little speckled eggs are laid will cling to it even under difficulties. The sailors of a coasting vessel once lying in a Scotch port frequently observed two sparrows flying about the topmast. ”