IX 
SOME APRIL SPARROWS 
For the first three weeks of April the ornithol- 
ogist goes comparatively seldom into the woods. 
Millions of birds have come up from the South, 
but the forest is still almost deserted. May, with 
its hosts of warblers, will bring a grand change 
in this respect; meanwhile the sparrows are in 
the ascendant, and we shall do well to follow the 
road for the most part, though with frequent 
excursions across fields and into gardens and or- 
chards. Of eighty-four species of birds seen by 
me in April, a year ago, twenty-one were: water 
birds, and of the remaining: sixty-three, twenty, 
or almost one third, were members of the spar- 
row family, while only five were warblers. In 
May, on the other hand, out of one hundred and 
twenty-five species seen twenty-three were war- 
blers, and only eighteen were sparrows. To re- 
present the case fairly, however, the comparison 
should be by individuals rather than by species, 
and for such a comparison I have no adequate 
data. My own opinion is that of all the birds 
