1566 THE PERCHING BIRDS 



contrary, they inflict considerable injury upon gardeners by picking up freshly- 

 sown seeds of every kind. They destroy green peas quite as effectually as the 

 hawfinch, and are in many other respects most undesirable neighbors. In 

 America the influence of the house sparrow has already proved disastrous to many 

 of the indigenous birds, which have been driven from their proper haunts by the 

 intruder. Even in remote districts of the Highlands of Scotland, the sparrow is- 

 gaining ground every year, and taking the place of more welcome guests. The 

 sparrow builds a cumbrous nest of straw, hay, dry grass, rags, or any other 

 material that comes handy; the nest being often placed in a waterspout, a chink 

 of a wall, the thatch of a barn, or the frieze of a building. Occasionally it is 

 placed in an open tree or hedgerow, but the nest is then domed as a protection 

 against the weather; and it is almost always profusely lined with feathers. 

 Taking great pains to maintain its plumage in good condition, the sparrow not 

 only indulges in frequent baths, like most of the finch tribe, but in summer shows 

 a partiality for dusting its feathers in lark fashion. Sparrows exhibit some pretty 

 variations of plumage; all the birds in a brood being occasionally spotted with white, 

 or at any rate cream colored; male birds in particular being frequently variegated 

 with white, which most affects the quill feathers. The adult cock in summer has 

 the plumage of the upper parts chestnut, streaked with black on the mantle and 

 back; the primaries being blackish, edged with pale rufous; the median coverts 

 black, tipped with white, forming a wing bar; the tail feathers dusky brown; the 

 crown of the head and nape ashy gray; a broad streak of chestnut extending down- 

 ward from the upper part of the eye; the cheeks ashy white; the throat and fore- 

 neck black; the sides of the breast brownish ash; and the under parts white. The 

 female is a dull brown bird, lacking the black gorget of the other sex. 

 Tre s The haunts of the tree sparrow (P. montanus} are more remote 



from human dwellings than are those of its congener the house 

 sparrow. Sometimes, it is true, a pair or two of tree sparrows may take up their 

 abode in some old wall beside a cottage or farmhouse; but trees are their favorite 

 resorts. Not unfrequently the tree sparrows build under old nests of rooks; the 

 nest being not so bulky or untidy as that of the house sparrow. The eggs are 

 bluish white in ground color, blotched and spotted or suffused with hair brown. 

 Sometimes tree sparrows nest in the crevices of a chalk cliff, and a colony has been 

 found established under the iron girder of a railway bridge. The movements of the 

 tree sparrow are more graceful than those of the common bird, from which it can 

 also be distinguished by its more musical and shriller chirp; while, unlike the house 

 sparrow, the tree sparrow possesses a short but pleasing song. Far more shy than 

 the house sparrow, the tree sparrow, instead of courting observation, shuns 

 publicity, and its flight is more rapid than that of its cousin. On one or two 

 occasions we have seen the two species consorting together, and we have observed 

 the tree sparrows flying with flocks of greenfinches during the autumn migration. 

 The majority of those we have seen in confinement seemed too wild to give their 

 confidence readily to any human being; but a male of this species, caught in the 

 month of February, lost its dread of man in a very few weeks, and sang freely in a 

 cage. Although, as already said, the house sparrow is so subject to variations of 



