HOUSE-SPAEEOW. 211 



called " chovies"* in both Norfolk and Suffolk. (Mr. 

 Alfred Newton informs me lie has seen the mouths 

 of these birds literally crammed with these pests of the 

 garden, the orchard, and the plantation). It is 

 also throughout the breeding season, a veritable fly- 

 catcher, as even the least observant j)ersons must have 

 noticed in their walks. Flitting amongst the thick 

 foliage of the trees, it searches the leaves with most 

 assiduous care, or perched on the house-top or an open 

 branch, springs suddenly into the air after the passing 

 insect, and turns and twists about upon the wing, 

 should it fail at first to secure its prey. As I now 

 sit writing, a pair of young sparrows, reared in the 

 eaves of the house, are revelling in the enjoyment 

 of their newly acquired powers, as they flutter along 

 the garden walks with their anxious parents. The 

 old birds, alternately, after their brief excursions, 

 bring back fresh dainties for those gaping beaks, of 

 which the fluttering, trailing wings of the nestlings, 

 bespeak then- full enjoyment. And this remember, with 

 untiring energy, goes on from the earliest dawn of our 

 long summer days, till late in the evening, and as has 

 been estimated, on good authority, a single pair of 

 sparrows, in one week, in thus feeding their young, 

 destroy about 3,400 caterpillars; yet, in spite of all 



* The following description of the beetle to which this local 

 name applies, is from " Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia," and 

 speaks volumes for the benefits conferred upon mankind by the 

 sparrow in checking the ravages of such insect plagues : — 

 " Chovy, s. a small coleopterous iusect, which invades gardens and 

 orchards in hot summers, in our sandy districts, and the imme- 

 diate neighbourhoods of them, in such swarms as to be nearly 

 equal to a plague of locusts ; devouring every green thing before 

 them. It is common to drive ducks into a garden, or swine into 

 an orchard, and shake the insects from the trees to be devoured. 

 But their numbers, constantly renewed, are often found insu- 

 perable." 

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