366 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



English sparrows in a location where warblers and 

 finches are homing means worse destruction to the 

 birds than a plague of influenza, typhoid, and small- 

 pox combined would mean to human beings, since 

 a healthful human being rightly cared for has a 

 chance of escaping the ravages of disease. Other 

 and smaller birds have no chance whatever to 

 escape the sparrow, which is a pugnacious little 

 bulldog in a fight. It unhesitatingly attacks birds 

 from the size of a robin down, breaking eggs, tear- 

 ing up nests, throwing young birds from nests, 

 eating them if they are small enough. In my per- 

 sonal experience, I have seen English sparrows 

 throw the young from the nest of a robin, built 

 where the logs cross under the roof of a veranda, 

 the fall killing them on the floor below. I have 

 seen them enter high bird boxes and drag out young 

 martins and bluebirds, throwing them to their 

 death if the young were too big to carry to their 

 own nests for food. I have seen them enter robin 

 nests, break the egg shells, eat all they could hold, 

 and when they could hold no more, break the re- 

 mainder of the eggs for pure mischief. Earlier 

 in this book, I described the exquisite spectacle 

 made by the courtship of a pair of cardinals that 

 had selected a nesting site in the wild rose bushes 

 over the music-room window of the Cabin, south; 

 but I left the denouement of that story until the 

 present time, because I wished to use it in the 

 strongest summing up I know how to make against 



