484 MICHKIAN BUil) LIFE. 



spoiLsihlc i);iriics, but cci'tain persons should ))e designated and paid for the 

 work, and proper precautions should be taken to prevent accident of any 

 kind. The system which has been successfully used by individuals in 

 various places in the country is as follows: During midwinter, when the 

 Sparrows have congregated in the towns and cities and when heavy snow 

 has covered most of the available food and they are pinched more or less 

 for supplies, they should be baited for several successive days to some 

 stal)le yard or inclosed area where they will gather in immense numbers 

 if not needlessly alarmed. When several hundreds have thus been lured 

 to feed regularly, and the amount of food which they will consume com- 

 pletely has been determined, a similar amount of the same food, previously 

 soaked with strychnine and carefully dried, is fed to them at the usual time. 

 Ordinarily the whole of this poisoned grain will be eaten, and four-fifths 

 of the Sparrows will die within a few moments and within a few yards of 

 the feeding place. The remainder will flutter a little farther away, but 

 within a few hours every Sparrow which ate at this place is likely to die. 

 No danger whatever is to be apprehended to cats, dogs, pigs or other animals 

 which might eat the poisoned Sparrows, and if any poisoned grain is left 

 uneaten it can readily be swept up for use at another time or can be de- 

 stroyed by burning if desired. There is far less cruelty in killing Sparrows 

 in this way than by ordinary shooting or trapping, since experiment with 

 caged Sparrows shows that strychnine is very quickly effective and that the 

 Sparrows die from it with practically no pain at all. It is important that 

 the poisoning should be done only during the winter season, when all native 

 birds are absent, and in case poultry or pigeons are attracted by the baiting 

 they may be excluded by the use of coops made of laths, through the spaces 

 of which the Sparrows can pass freely while the pigeons will be kept out. 



For illustrations of the working of the Michigan law and other bounty 

 laws the reader should consult the work on the English Sparrow already 

 mentioned, or an article by Dr. T. S. Palmer entitled "Extermination of 

 Noxious Animals by Bounties," which may be found in the Yearbook 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1896, pp. 55-68. 



If any bounty law is to remain upon the Michigan statute books it is 

 certainly advisable that it should be materially different from the present 

 law. Under the statutes Sparrows may be killed at any time of year, 

 although bounties may be paid only in December, January and February, 

 and the examination of Sparrows so killed is made by the county clerk of 

 the "townshij), village or city within which such Sparrows have been 

 killed." While the bounty law provides a fine for the attempt of any 

 person to collect a bounty on birds other than English Sparrows, it is obvious 

 that the aforesaid county clerk must be able to discriminate between 

 English Sparrows and other birds or there is danger not only that bounties 

 will be illegally paid, but that many of our valuable birds will be destroyed. 

 Under the best conditions bounty laws are expensive and unsatisfactory, 

 and so far as the English Sparrow in Michigan is concerned they are at 

 least extremely vmwise and ineffective. 



TECHNIC.VL DESCRIPTION. 



Adult male: Top of head clear gray; a broad stripe of chestnut runs backward from the 

 eye and spreads on the nape and sides of neck so as to form an imperfect collar or cape; 

 back and scapulars streaked with black and chestnut; rump and uj^per tail-coverts plain 

 brownisii gray; imder parts grayish-white or almost white on sides of neck and cheeks, 

 the middle line of throat and a large patch on the chest deep black; most of the wing- 

 coverts and outer margins of secondaries and tertiaries bright chestnut, the middle co\ertB 



