24 • THE HOUSE SPARROW: 



be inferred that nestling sparrows are fed with little else 

 than corn and peas, while another instance taken alone 

 might be thought to prove that insects were almost their 

 only food. 



The following is, according to my observation, an out- 

 line of the life-history of a country sparrow. After being 

 reared in the nest on some or all the sorts of food just 

 mentioned, according to the notions of his parents (and 

 these notions differ greatly with the same opportunities), 

 if there is nothing ready for him in the fields, he lives, on 

 corn and green peas if these things are to be found, 

 about buildings, yards, gardens and roads (unless a field 

 of early peas tempt him out sooner), till corn is forming 

 in the ear, when he and his kind begin their ravages on 

 it as soon as it will afford them a little milky stuff in the 

 ears. If he does not leave the nest till this time or later, 

 he quickly betakes himself to the cornfields. As time 

 goes on, he and his fellows go further into and stay more 

 in the fields, till, by September or earlier, most of them 

 live in them altogether, sitting on the hedges by day and 

 roosting in them by night, and feeding entirely on corn, 

 until, generally at some time in October, all the corn on 

 the stubbles is sprouting-"' or rotting ; he then eats a few 

 wild seeds ; but when these and damaged corn are all 

 he can get in the fields, he soon leaves them and 

 goes home to houses and farmyards, getting his food 

 with fowls and pigs, on the roads and at stacks, especially 

 after these are threshed out. He lives thus till spring, 

 except that at autumn seed-time he has a turn at the 

 wheatfields, picking up what grain he can get at before it 

 has time to sprout. In March I have sometimes found 

 a small soft beetle or two, occasionally a small caterpillar, 



* Sparrows, unlike larks, do not seem to like sprouted corn. 



