I02 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



to purify herself with dust-baths. At times they prefer to 

 make an unsightly nest in the ivy on an old elm-tree, but 

 this is not a common practice. 



In the early morning the garden is filled with their infernal 

 chatter, and they are busy pulling off buds or sphtting them 

 open with their hard bills, or else they are robbing the green 

 peas, or plucking off the tender tips of the young pea plants, 

 or pulling the primroses on your lawn to pieces, or playing 

 general havoc, and drowning the sweet soft voices of the 

 insectivorous birds with their senseless chatter, as well as 

 frightening other birds from your garden. Then the foolish 

 young birds appear, for there is scarce a greater fool than 

 a young sparrow ; he must fly where there is danger, and 

 if in any trouble he has no idea how to extricate himself. 

 I one day watched some young birds busily eating newly- 

 born ants — the winged progeny — for they won't touch the 

 others. One of these ants fixed on to a young bird's foot, 

 and instead of eating him off, as a siskin would have done, 

 he flew away shrieking, helpless as a soldier in a shipwreck. 



And as you succeed in sowing your seed, the sparrow is 

 there for an early feast — to pick holes into the ridges, to 

 eat wholesale until the corn ripens in the fields, when your 

 pest deserts you for the farmer, whom he injures most of 

 all ; for though he spends money early in the season on 

 bird-catchers, who " scrap " places and put out oats to 

 ''coy" them with; still, when the corn gets " for'ard," 

 the sparrows go to rob the fields. I have seen hundreds 

 of these clumsy, commonplace thieves amongst the ripe 

 wheat and barley, eating the grain planted along the fences ; 

 and they collect in greater numbers where the hedgerows 

 surrounding the fields are high. But the sparrow is not 

 proud ; he will eat hog-wash, and is very fond of " fare-a- 

 faking" (the cottagers' pigs' straw), as well as playing havoc 

 in an early spring onion-bed, having as keen a bill for a 

 young Banbury onion or early shorthorn carrot as a cook ; 

 nor will he always wait for the corn to ripen, for he, with 



