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TREE SPARROW. 

 Passer montanus (/..)• 



Resident, local ; large flocks of migrants arrive in autumn. 



The first reference to this species is contained in a 

 communication from Dr. Sherrard (the botanist and friend 

 of John Ray) to Walter Moyle, and is dated London, May loth 

 1720. It reads thus : — 



" Having received a letter from my old friend Dr. 

 Richardson of North Bierley in Yorkshire, with a bird he 

 thinks new, I wou'd not neglect acquainting you of it and 

 offering you it if you have it not. He calls it Passer domesticus 

 minor, torquatus, vertice cupreo ; 'tis the hen. The cock, he 

 writes me, has a much fairer ring about his neck." (The 

 works of Walter Moyle, Esq., 1726. J. E. Harting, in 

 introduction to Rodd's " Birds of Cornwall.") It is also 

 referred to by G. Edwards, who had a specimen sent from 

 Landesburg in Yorkshire. ("Gleanings of Natural History," 

 1760, Part ii., p. 124.) Pennant, after giving a description 

 of the bird, added : " We are obliged to Mr. Edwards for 

 this description, who first discovered them to be natives 

 of Yorkshire." (" Brit. Zool.," 1766 Ed., p. 109.) 



Thomas Allis, in 1844, wrote : — 



Passer montana. — Tree Sparrow — Near Sheffield, Halifax, and 

 Barnsley this bird is infrequent ; it is met with near Leeds and Doncas- 

 ter, and is not uncommon in the vicinity of York. Arthur Strickland 

 observes "It is well known that this bird usually builds in hollow trees, 

 but, as a proof how circumstances alter their habits, or perhaps they 

 return to their more natural ones, at Walton, where birds are protected 

 from injury, it, for several years, built in a clipped hedge near the house, 

 making a nest of sticks closed in on all sides like that of a Magpie ; 

 unfortunately the hedge was cut down and they forsook the place." 



The Tree Sparrow is resident, local, and rather eccentric 

 in its distribution, though during the past twenty years 

 it has greatly increased and multiplied in numbers ; in 



