70 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



in arrow-flight time. It is probable that no feathered gather- 

 ing ever had a better apparent reason for adjourning than did 

 that bunch of city sparrows. Coincident with the sight of 

 their scurrying there fell upon my ear a dismal cry from 

 above. It was a half croak, half file rasp, a sort of disaster- 

 foreboding wail. Then a shadow swept over the ground, and 

 a look upward showed me a big red and gray parrot making 

 a lumbering flight in full and awful cry from the back piazza 

 of a third-story flat. The sparrows probably have family 

 traditions of all sorts of feathered horrors. It is doubtful, 

 however, if a search of the archives of their remote ancestors 

 would show anything descriptive of more terror of voice, beak, 

 and plumage than that which had just broken on their sight 

 and hearing. Small wonder is it that the sparrows took to 

 the woods. The parrot lighted in a tree which towered above 

 that in which the sparrows had taken refuge. The bird's 

 intention of perching in this tree was no sooner expressed by 

 the direction of its flight than the sparrow horde left one 

 hiding-place and fled to another. 



English sparrows, like all other birds, are inquisitive, and 

 when they saw that this bird nightmare, which strangely had 

 chosen a bright day to be abroad, showed no signs of hostility 

 they gathered about it by the hundreds. They hurled all 

 sorts of names at the parrot. Never before had I realized the 

 extent of the sparrow vocabulary. The parrot made its awk- 

 ward way from tree to tree, followed by all the sparrows resi- 

 dent in that section of the city. The feathered street gamins 

 gave over eating and the delights of fighting for the pure 

 pleasure of swearing at this interrupter of their breakfast. 

 Poll contented herself with croaking at the assembled throng, 

 and with occasionally asking an individual sparrow for a 



