18 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



parts they turned around and tipped slightly backward. And to 

 wash their breasts and underparts generally they flew very low across 

 the water, dipping down into it one to several times on the way. 

 Some contrived even better baths by swimming flutteringly the 

 whole way across the bowls. 



"An instance of drinking was noted at a building where an exhaust 

 pipe projected through the wall a yard or so above the ground. The 

 pipe was about an inch in diameter and it projected from the wall 

 just about an inch. Water was dripping from it, and although the 

 drip was not fast enough to form even a small puddle on the ground, 

 the sparrows of the neighborhood had solved the problem of getting 

 a drink. Every now and then one would come flying, alight on the 

 bit of exposed pipe, bend downward — sometimes in a very awkward 

 position — and drink the drops as they collected on the lip of the pipe. 

 Four birds drank in this way during ten minutes that I watched." 



English sparrows will roost for the night wherever they can find a 

 little shelter in, under, or about buildings or other human structures, 

 under electric light hoods, or in dense evergreen trees. But they 

 often huddle together for mutual protection where there is no shelter 

 whatever, just as they did in the big city roosts, when the sparrows 

 lived in the cities. 



On Chestnut Street, the principal business street in Philadelphia, 

 writes J. P. Norris (1891), stood an old-fashioned dwelling, the only 

 one on the street: "On the lower side of the house, just inside the 

 brick wall that encloses the garden, stands a tree about forty feet high, 

 with many branches; and every afternoon the English Sparrows roost 

 here literally by thousands. Every branch is covered with them, 

 and they are huddled together as close as they can sit. To count them 

 all would be impossible, but I have seen over fifty on one branch. 

 A long wall of an adjoining store is covered with ivy and Virginia 

 Creeper, and this forms a convenient roosting place for those birds 

 that cannot find places on the tree." 



The spectacular sparrow roost that formerly existed in the King's 

 Chapel burying ground in the center of Boston is well described by 

 Dr. Townsend (1909). The birds- 

 frequent the place throughout the year but are decidedly less numerous in the 

 spring months and most numerous during the fall and winter. Thus on Novem- 

 ber 25, 1905, between 4 and 5 p. m., I estimated that about 3,000 were in this 

 place in five trees. The other two trees were empty. On February 20, 1906, on 

 a mild pleasant day, when the sun set 5:24 p.m., the roost was studied from the 

 near-by City Hall. The roosting trees seen from above looked as if their limbs 

 had been whitewashed and the ground and grass beneath were similarly affected. 

 The first arrivals appear at 3:45 p.m., about a dozen in all. At 4 the birds are 

 coming singly and in small groups alighting in the trees but frequently changing 

 from place to place, chirping continuously and fighting for positions. At 4:05 a 



