SPARROWS AND OTHER FINCHES 59 



The food-stand has shown me what 

 sparrows are and what they can do. When 

 I set it up I had no wish to feed sparrows, 

 and could not bear to see them devouring 

 all before them in the greedy, systematic way 

 that they have. So I set my wits to work to 

 see if I could not contrive something by 

 which they might be baffled without depriving 

 the tits of their food. It proved more than 

 I could do to prevent any of the sparrows 

 getting any of the food, but I was able to 

 make it more difficult for them, so difficult 

 that only a few could manage it. They 

 differ very much individually : some are far 

 bolder and more enterprising than others, 

 but I have found that some sparrows can do 

 almost anything that a tit can do in the way 

 of acrobatic performances, though not, of 

 course, with the same easy grace. I tried 

 many devices. I had seen somewhere that 

 if food were suspended from a pliable twig 

 only tits would venture to attack it. It didn't 

 take long to prove the fallacy of this idea. 

 The swinging of the net made not the 

 slightest difference to the sparrows; they 

 alighted on it just as readily as if it had been 

 lying on the ground. Then I tried hanging 

 the net at one end of a stick and a movable 

 weight at the other. The stick acted as a 

 balance, and the net went down directly a 

 bird settled on it. This instability frightened 

 the sparrows for a long time, but in the end 



