LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN 



WEAVER FINCHES, BLACKBIRDS, 



ORIOLES, AND TANAGERS 



By Arthur Cleveland Bent 



Order Passeriformes: Family Ploceidae, Weaver Finches 



PASSER DOMESTICUS DOMESTICUS (Linnaeus) 



English Sparrow 



HABITS 



The common name English sparrow is a misnomer, but it has stuck 

 to this bird for some hundred years and is likely to survive indefinitely. 

 It was quite natural to call it the English sparrow, as most of the 

 birds were imported from England, but the species is widely distributed 

 in Europe and Asia, with closely related forms in North Africa. For 

 a full account of its distribution and geographical variations the reader 

 is referred to an excellent paper on the subject by Dr. John C. Phillips 

 (1915). And, after calling it a sparrow for these many years, and 

 our commonest and best known sparrow at that, we must recognize 

 it as a weaver finch and separate it widely from our sparrows in the 

 A. O. U. Check-List. Who wants to call it the European weaver 

 finch? The scientific name has not been changed, for which we may 

 be truly thankful! 



Many years ago, when I was a small boy, probably in the late 

 1860's or early 1870's, my uncle, who lived next door to us in Taunton, 

 was the first to introduce English sparrows into that immediate 

 vicinity. He built a large flying cage in his garden that was roofed 

 over, covered with netting on four sides, and well supplied with 

 perches and nesting boxes. Here the sparrows were so well fed and 

 cared for that they soon began to breed. It was not long before the 

 cage became overcrowded, and he ordered his coachman to put up 



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