16 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETEST 211 



We frequently saw several sparrows at work in a single tree. At 

 the height of the sparrow abundance these little worms were nearly 

 exterminated about my home, or at least very materially reduced in 

 numbers. But, since the decline in the sparrow population, the 

 inch worms have increased decidedly. The scarcity of vireos and 

 other insectivorous birds may have partially accounted for the 

 increase in the inch worms. 



I remember once, when there was a plague of army worms here, 

 the sparrows gathered in large numbers and fed greedily upon them. 

 In the West, outbreaks of Mormon crickets have been at least checked 

 by English sparrows. 



According to William J. Howard (1937), English sparrows were the 

 most numerous and most active of all the birds in attacking an emer- 

 gence of 17-year locusts in Indiana. "Although there were multi- 

 tudes of dead and dying insects upon trees and the ground, the 

 sparrows were very active in pursuing flying locusts. As many as 

 three sparrows were seen to chase a single insect, and the squabble 

 and fight characteristic of this bird usually ensued when one of the 

 birds caught an insect." 



Sparrows are often seen picking insects off the radiators of auto- 

 mobiles where they have been caught and killed. But they can also 

 catch many flying insects in the air — wasps, bees, flying ants, and 

 other Hymenoptera. They are, in fact, very resourceful in their 

 varied feeding habits. They eat the snow-white linden moths when 

 they appear in July, and feed on the tent caterpillars and brown- 

 tailed moths. 



Behavior. — The English sparrow is a noisy, boisterous, and aggres- 

 sive bully in its relations with other species. Generally cordially 

 hated by both birds and men, its record is almost wholly black. It 

 drives bluebirds, swallows, and wrens from their nesting boxes by 

 force, or by preempting them in advance. Some of these rightful 

 tenants of the boxes can resist eviction by an aggressive pair of 

 sparrows, but they cannot withstand mob violence when the spar- 

 rows attack in superior numbers, as they sometimes do; then the 

 gentler birds give up the fight and retire to find more peaceful quarters 

 elsewhere. But the box-dwellers are not the only sufferers; the spar- 

 rows seize and occupy the bottleneck nests of cliff swallows, the open 

 nests of barn swallows, and even the burrows of bank swallows. It was 

 thought that the English sparrow might meet its match in the house 

 finch in Colorado, but such was not to be. Bergtold (1913) writes: 



The loss of nests, eggs and young of the House Finch through direct destruc- 

 tion by the English Sparrow is very large. It was 16% in some of the nests 

 studied by the writer, and, moreover, this 16% loss of eggs does not include the 

 very large potential loss of House Finch eggs and young brought about by 



