HOUSE-SPARROW 133 



breeding in holes in houses, where his eggs and young are much 

 safer than in trees and hedges. There is a curious diversity in his 

 nesting habits : he generally prefers a hole in a wall, or some safe, 

 convenient cavity, and will make vigorous war on and eject other 

 species, like the house-martin, from their nests and nesting-holes ; 

 but when such receptacles are not sufficiently numerous, or it ap- 

 pears safe to do so, he builds in trees, making a large, conspicuous, 

 oval, domed nest of straw, mixed with strings, rags, and other 

 materials, and thickly lined inside with feathers. Five to six eggs 

 are laid, of a pale bluish white ground-colour, spotted, blotched, or 

 suffused with grey and dusky brown. The young are fed on cater- 

 pillars ; and the adults also are partly insectivorous during the sum- 

 mer months, but in the autumn and winter grain, seeds, and buds 

 are chiefly eaten. 



Tree- Sparrow. 

 Passer montanus. 



Crown and back of head chestnut-brown ; lore, ear-coverts, and 

 throat black ; neck almost surrounded by a white collar ; upper 

 parts as in the last ; wing with two transverse white bars. Length, 

 five and a half inches. 



By a careless observer the tree-sparrow would, in most cases, be 

 taken for the house- sparrow, and not looked directly at. When we 

 know that there is a tree-sparrow, and meet with it, we notice the 

 chief points in which it differs from the common species the 

 chestnut-coloured head, with black and white patches at the side, 

 and the double bar on the wing. 



The tree-sparrow is locally distributed throughout England and 

 Scotland, but is nowhere abundant ; in Wales and Ireland it is rare. 

 With us it is a shy bird, being found, as a rule, at a distance from 

 houses, in fields, on the borders of woods, in thickets growing 

 beside streams, and in fir plantations. In some districts on the 

 Continent it is far less shy of man, and lives in villages and towns, 

 where it associates with the common sparrow, and is said to be just 

 as tame. In many parts of Asia it is still more domestic. Edward 

 Blyth wrote of it : ' In the great rice-exporting station of Akyab 

 we have seen this species so familiarly hopping about in the public 

 streets that it would only just move out of the way of the passers- 

 by ; and we have also known it breeding so numerously in dwelling- 



