30 THE HOUSE SPARROW: 



This food, carefully examined (as in all cases, with a lens), 

 was found to be corn, milky, green, and ripe, and somie- 

 times green peas from my garden ; only two small insects 

 were found in the whole number. The food in them has 

 been much the same every year. Examining the old 

 birds, however, is not test enough, as they eat very few 

 insects anywhere ; but if any were the peculiar prey of 

 sparrows, they would be found in quantity in any young 

 ones bred about my place. To test this, when a pair or 

 two of sparrows, as happens most years, contrive, by 

 keeping clear of the buildings, to escape being shot long 

 enough to build a nest and hatch young ones, these have 

 been taken (by choice when about half-grown), and the 

 food in them carefully examined. It has varied greatly, 

 but certainly there were not more insects among it, I 

 think less, than there usually are where sparrows abound. 

 In the only nest known of one year, the food in the four 

 young ones was chiefly green peas, with some grains of 

 green wheat, one small beetle, and some half-dozen small 

 insects of species unknown to me. In the only nest the 

 following year the young ones had little in them except 

 corn — old wheat, if I remember rightly. Some broods 

 have contained small beetles (which, mostly soft ones, I 

 have found in sparrows old and young, from all sorts of 

 places, often er than caterpillars) and a few wild seeds. 

 One brood had a mixture of beetles and ripe wheat. 

 One grasshopper's leg and a very few pieces of earwigs 

 have also been found. Of caterpillars, said to be kept 

 down by sparrows, only two small ones in eight callow 

 birds, from two nests taken at the same time, have been 

 found in all the years that these nestlings have been 

 examined, and no trace of an aphis. The absence of 

 caterpillars is the only difference that I have noticed in 



