14 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



oats, wheat, and corn that it eats. These grains alone made up over 

 55 percent of the food of the adults. 



Forbush (1929) gives the following general account of the food of 

 this bird: "The food of the House Sparrow includes many substances, 

 chiefly vegetal, and ranging from fruit and grain to garbage, and un- 

 digested grain and seeds in horse droppings. It eats greedily all the 

 small grains and bird seeds, crumbs of bread, cake and other foods 

 of mankind, small fruits and succulent garden plants in their tender 

 stages. It destroys young peas, turnips, cabbage and nearly all 

 young vegetables, and it often eats the undeveloped seeds of vege- 

 tables. When numerous it attacks apples, peaches, plums, pears, 

 strawberries, currants and all other common small fruits." 



It has repeatedly been seen eating apple blossoms and those of 

 peas and beans. Tilford Moore (MS.) saw one trying to get at the 

 seeds in a large sunflower head, "but, as the bloom was face down- 

 ward and as he was unable to hang upside down, he was unsuccessful. 

 The above method, sometimes successful, is used on seeds at the edge 

 of the bloom only. For seeds toward the center, they hover beneath 

 the bloom and reach up to draw one out. Then they fly to the ground 

 where they remove the husks to get at the kernels. Thus the birds 

 of this species have harvested almost all the seeds." 



Irving W. Burr writes to me: "One of the bird's commonest food 

 in late summer and fall is the seed from crab grass (Digitaria sp.). 

 That is the explanation of the foraging flocks on the lawns. Binocu- 

 lars reveal that the bobbing heads are busy shoveling in the seeds, 

 just as a boy will strip a weed stalk. The number of crab grass seeds 

 which a flock of forty sparrows will eat in a day must be enormous. 

 Surely everyone would regard this as a commendable trait in the 

 bird." I have seen the birds doing this on my lawns, but cannot 

 see that the crab grass is materially reduced. 



Judd (1896) also refers to the sparrows as eating the seed of crab 

 grass, chickweed, and dandelion, but none of these lawn pests have 

 been exterminated anywhere, though they may be somewhat con- 

 trolled. He says that "more than half of the dandelions that bloomed 

 in April on the lawns of the U. S. Department of Agriculture were 

 damaged by Sparrows." Kalmbach (1940) mentions ragweed seeds 

 as dominant in the food of this sparrow, but says that crab grass 

 seeds are "taken in greater bulk and numbers but found in fewer 

 stomachs. * * * As many as 1,274 were taken from the crop of a 

 single English sparrow from Alabama; more than 900 each from 2 

 others; and 150 or more each from fully 40 others." He then gives 

 a long list of other weed seeds and grass seeds eaten. 



Judd (1901) said of the vegetable food, as then known and not very 

 different from our present knowledge: "Of the 98 percent constituting 



