'110 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 



SPARROW, TREE. 



THE more extended my investigations into the 

 bird life of this country become, the more con- 

 vinced am I that the Tree -Sparrow is less rare 

 than it is generally supposed to be. Its 

 notes, habits, and appearance bear such a 

 general resemblance to those of the House- 

 Sparrow, that there can be no doubt its pre- 

 sence is overlooked by nearly all but practical 

 ornithologists. 



Whilst at St. Kilda in 1896, I saw quite eight 

 pairs of Tree - Sparrows, and succeeded in finding 

 four nests, two of which were situated in dry 

 walls, and the remainder in the cliffs on the east 

 and west sides of Village Bay. They all contained 

 young ones, which I handled in three out of the 

 four cases. I have also met with the bird once 

 or twice in the Outer Hebrides, and last summer 

 had a good opportunity of studying two pairs 

 nesting in the chimneys of a farmhouse in which 

 I was staying in North Uist. 



A few r years ago I fell in with a colony of 

 three or four pairs breeding in holes in the trunk 

 and branches of a dead tree in a lonely, out-of- 

 the-way part of Hertfordshire, but upon returning 

 the following spring I was sorry to find that the 

 tree had been blown down. 



Our picture was also secured in the same 

 county. I watched the birds build their nest, 

 which was a surprisingly small one, in a hole in 

 the tree figuring in the foreground of the illustra- 

 tion, and afterwards discovered that it contained 

 no less than eight eggs, the highest number re- 

 corded, I believe, for the species. 



The nest is composed of straws, dry grass, 



