THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



CHAPTER III. 

 THE PERCHING BIRDS. (Continued?) 



SOME one somewhere has referred to our country 

 as one much be-sparrowed. If this remark 

 referred to the nuisance of our city streets, it might 

 well be said to be overmuch be-sparrowed ; but as 

 a class, and placed where Nature purposed them to 

 be, the sparrows, buntings, finches, and grosbeaks 

 that go to make up the group known as Fringillidce, 

 these birds are a delight, and being harmless but 

 all birds really are and many of them excellent 

 musicians, their places would be sadly missed did 

 they forsake our fields and meadows, our gardens 

 and door-yards, our woodlands and the sandy shores 

 of the resounding sea. Sparrows of one or more 

 species everywhere abound, and the sun shines more 

 brightly, the flowers are fairer, the grass greener, the 

 very air balmier, because of their presence. Nor 

 are they fair-weather friends only. There is no mid- 

 winter day too arctic for a slate-colored snow-bird, 

 or possibly, even as far south as the Middle States, 

 a snow-flake or a long-spur ; and whatever weather 

 rages in circumpolar lands there are sparrows near 

 at hand ; and in summer at noontide, when the heat 

 threatens to scorch the whole living world, I have 

 heard the indigo-finch singing by the hour, and not 

 seeking the shade of even a single leaf. We are to 



