132 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



this bird should frequently produce three broods in the year; the abundance of 

 the species is therefore easy to understand, although its absolute hardiness and 

 the ease with which it accommodates itself to change of diet may have something 

 to do with it. Its natural food consists largely of insects, spiders, worms, and 

 seeds of weeds ; but, in confinement, like its cousin the Pekin Nightingale, it may 

 gradually be accustomed to live upon a seed diet alone. 



Mr. Stevenson in his " Birds of Norfolk," says : " With myself the Hedge- 

 Sparrow has been always an especial favourite, from its gentle unobtrusive nature, 

 assimilating so well with the neat russet and grey of its finely marked though 

 quiet plumage ; retiring, yet not shy, and, if never quarrelsome, still always 

 " holding his own," even with the pert Sparrow and still more saucy Redbreast." 

 This reminds me that I have given no detailed account of the plumage of this 

 well-known bird. 



The upper surface of the head is smoke-grey (slightly washed with buff in 

 the female) and streaked with dull blackish-brown ; on the neck and shoulders the 

 grey becomes a pure bluish-ash ; the back is rufous-brown, broadly streaked with 

 black ; but the rump and upper tail-coverts are golden-olivaceous and not streaked ; 

 the wings are dark-brown, all the feathers more or less broadly edged externally 

 with rufous-brown ; the tail feathers are similar, but tinted externally with rufous 

 or olivaceous-brown ; lores and ear-coverts brown ; chin, throat, sides of neck, and 

 breast bluish-ash ; lower breast and abdomen in the centre whitish-ash ; under tail- 

 coverts buffish-white, with brown streaks ; flanks olivaceous- brown, with dark-brown 

 streaks ; bill pitchy-brown, the lower mandible slightly paler ; feet horn-brown ; iris 

 hazel. The female has the bill slightly broader than in the male, the crown and 

 flanks with more defined streaks. The young have no grey on the head or throat, 

 but are altogether browner and more spotted than adult birds. 



Mr. Stevenson is mistaken in thinking that the Hedge- Sparrow is not 

 quarrelsome ; I have seen it disputing vigorously with a Skylark, in the open, for 

 the possession of an insect, and a hen bird which I kept for several years in an 

 aviary killed several Titlarks and finally robbed a pair of Yellow-Hammers of their 

 nest, in which she deposited a full clutch of infertile eggs, and sat steadily upon 

 them until, at the end of a fortnight, I removed them. 



Another point in which I differ from this author is, that he speaks of the 

 Accentor as singing as sweetly in an aviary as out of doors. Of the many birds 

 which, from time to time, I have kept, not one ever made the slightest attempt 

 at singing. When first caught few birds are more wild, and they show their 

 wildness in an idiotic manner which is simply exasperating, spending the whole 

 day, excepting when feeding, in flying perpendicularly from the earth to the roof, 



