326 BIRD WATCHING 



usurpation so tamely. If they are not capable of 

 combining together in order to expel a stranger from 

 the colony, this speaks little for their intelligence, 

 as they have, at least, been generally two to one. 

 This is a good working majority, and why, under 

 such circumstances, an impudent sparrow should be 

 allowed to sit quietly in the home whereinto he has 

 intruded, I cannot quite understand. But so it is, 

 or so, at least, it has been, in my own experience. 



But I must not wrong the sparrow. Let me recall 

 that word " impudent," and bury still more deeply 

 another one, to wit, " unscrupulous," that I was about 

 to make use of. A sparrow, when he thus acts, is 

 simply annexing territory, and should have all the 

 credit of forbearance and self-sacrifice that belongs 

 to such an act. His motives in doing so are, no 

 doubt, as creditable as are those which restrain him 

 from acting similarly in the case of more powerful 

 birds, and if a doubt of this should ever cross his 

 mind, he need only read a newspaper or two and 

 listen to some speeches in " the House." He will 

 know the integrity of his own heart — then. 



It seems wonderful that a bird of the swallow tribe 

 — so aerial, and without any special structural adapta- 

 tion for burrowing — should be capable of driving 

 horizontal shafts into the face of a bank or pit, to 

 the length, sometimes, of seven or even, it is said, 

 nine feet. Though the excavations be in sand, yet 

 this is often of a very firm consistency, and, moreover, 

 in many pits, the face of which had been largely 

 tunnelled by these birds, sand was a good deal 

 mingled with a fairly stiff clay. Though I have 

 not been able to watch the process of excavation from 



