THE FOOD OF YOUNG SPARROWS. 



THE FOOD OF YOUNG SPARROWS. 



The sparrow lays five or six greyish-white eggs spotted 

 with brown and ash-colour, and has frequently three broods 

 in the year, the first being hatched towards the end 

 of May. Young sparrows in the nest are generally fed 

 on caterpillars and other insects,* particularly in August, 

 yet a good many may be opened in June and July 

 without finding any in them. The parent sparrows 

 will begin to feed them on caterpillars when but a 

 day old, but they seem to discontinue the diet a little 

 time before they leave the nest, though, on the other 

 hand, some young sparrows, which were quite ready to 

 leave the nest, examined in Norfolk, did contain a few 

 small caterpillars. But of this I am sure, that while 

 very young their diet is quite as much unripe corn and 

 vegetable matter as caterpillars.! Even at the age of 

 one day a sparrow will feed its young one on a grain 

 of ripe corn. Say that a young sparrow eats 14 

 or 15 young caterpillars a day, that is probably as 

 good a guess as we can make. If this only went on 

 for ten 1 days the sum-total destroyed would be very 

 vast, and some of the caterpillars of very injurious kinds, 



* An instance of young sparrows being fed on water-beetles 

 occurred at the beginning of August, 1884. My father ordered a 

 pond to be cleaned out, at the bottom of which were a great 

 many small water-beetles ; these, the gardener tells me, were 

 eagerly collected by sparrows, ten or twelve at a time carrying 

 mouths-full of them away to feed their young with in the adja- 

 cent nests. 



f Colonel Russell says he has known young sparrows to be 

 fed with ripe wheat, which he was able to prove the old birds had 

 to go half a mile for. — 'Field,' June 22nd, 1878, 



