BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 161 



chief town bird over a very large part of the 

 world, and indeed you do not often find him 

 far away from houses of some sort. But how 

 he got this position is not so easy to under- 

 stand. We know how he got to North 

 America and Australia and New Zealand, 

 because he was taken there less than half a 

 century ago ; and now they wish they had not 

 got him ! But where did the sparrow start 

 on his travels ? He is not a bird of passage, 

 and does not care about colonizing a country 

 until we have made it comfortable for him by 

 cultivating it and building houses, and so we 

 find that he does not explore much for himself, 

 but follows our roads. In this way he is 

 spreading across Siberia as the Russians 

 colonize that country ; and as our European 

 civilization came from the east, he is most 

 likely an Eastern bird which has travelled 

 west with us. At any rate, there he is in 

 India, as lively as here and even tamer and 

 more cheeky, for he simply will not be kept 

 out of the rooms. He finds it safer to have 

 his nest indoors, for everywhere outside prowls 

 the house-crow, another bird who loves town 



life as much as the sparrow, and likes nothing 



21 



