178 THE HOUSE SPARROW 



birds ; therefore, the practice should not be tolerated on other than 

 strict conservation of the useful species. 



HOUSE SPARROW. The forester is the only cultivator that does 

 not suffer severely from an over-abundance of sparrows, while 

 the corn-farmer is most seriously affected, and in little less degree 

 the owner of poultry by taking the food given to fowls, as also a 

 goodly part of pigs' feeding-stuff, the gardener having no worse 

 plague in devouring seedlings, pulling flowers to pieces, 

 " browsing " on sprouting peas, beets, lettuces, spinach, etc., and after 

 tasting green peas is a perfect gormand. Fruit-growers pronounce 

 the sparrow a great offender, especially in winter and very early 

 spring by destroying the buds of gooseberry and currant bushes, 

 also those of plums and particularly damson trees, even " setting- 

 on " the gooseberry flowers, squeezing them for the nectar, and 

 causing the incipient fruit to drop. This gooseberry flower de- 

 struction is also attributed to the chaffinch, and appears a habit 

 acquired within the last few years. The sparrow is also said to 

 injure the blooms of plums, cherries, and sometimes of apples, 

 pulling the flowers to pieces ; even charged with taking a few ripe 

 strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, cobnuts and filberts. These 

 depredations seem to occur in districts where fruit-growing has 

 taken the place of ordinary agricultural crops, and is worst near 

 buildings and high trees. 



According to Mr. J. H. Gurney and Col. C. Russell's The House 

 Sparrow, the food of an adult sparrow, based on the careful exam- 

 ination of nearly 1,000 sparrows at different times o. the year, 

 through fifteen years, is : 



" Corn, 75 per cent. ; seeds of weeds, 10 per cent ; green peas, 

 4 per cent ; beetles, 3 per cent ; caterpillars, 2 per cent ; insects 

 which fly, i per cent ; other things, 5 per cent. In young sparrows 

 not more than 40 per cent, is corn, while about 40 per cent, consists 

 of caterpillars, and 10 per cent, of small beetles." As the sparrow 

 breeds three or four times a year, and as one pair may rear 20 

 young in a season, all of which are fed on food consisting of 50 per 

 cent, of caterpillars and small beetles, 10 per cent, of other food 

 not being accounted for, which we may assume to consist of aphides 

 and other soft (undeterminable in crop of bird) insects, while 40 

 per cent, of the food is given as corn which is not attacked in grow- 

 ing crops until the latest broods are fledged, there is much to be 

 said in favour of the sparrow as an insect -destroyer during the 

 breeding season, though 40 per cent, of vegetable food represents 

 destructive work on crops. This vegetable feeding-stuff must be 

 obtained near the nesting places in farm-buildings, homesteads and 

 adjuncts in rural, suburban, and urban districts, the birds being 

 unmolested in towns, parks, and villages. In these places brooding 

 sparrows must do much good by destroying innumerable pests, 

 such as aphides on fruit and other trees and bushes, loopers and other 



