86 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



when caterpillars and aphides, but especially the latter, are abundant, the Sparrow 

 makes itself somewhat useful in the country, although it must be admitted that 

 he drives away many more strictly insectivorous birds who could do the same 

 work far more efficiently. 



On the other hand both to the gardener and farmer the Sparrow is a positive 

 scourge, completely ruining beds of young carnations, or borders of crocuses and 

 primroses, breaking tender shoots in its ponderous struggles to secure insects, 

 scattering earth right and left over freshly gravelled paths in its search for newly 

 sown flower-seeds ; sampling peas, fruit, and grain of all kinds in abundance. 

 Moreover, even the insects which it devours when feeding its young, only represent 

 a portion of their diet ; whole rows of young beans and lettuce are devoured and 

 partly digested by the parents for the same purpose : it must also be borne in 

 mind that even the holding capacity of the ever hungry Sparrow is limited, and 

 that it feeds its young from the crop for some days after they leave the nest (as 

 anyone may see, who watches the birds in his garden, or in the thoroughfares of 

 cities and villages) so that there is by no means that incessant destruction of 

 noxious insects during the rearing of a Sparrow's progeny, which renders the 

 Titmice such enormous benefactors to the fruit-grower.* 



The young town-bred Sparrow, instead of being nourished on clean partly 

 digested grain, young vegetables, and insects, has to put up with all kinds of 

 refuse and garbage, and when it leaves the nest and is almost able to peck for 

 itself, I have sometimes been amused to see its mother satisfy its cries for food 

 by scooping up a beakful of mud out of a half-dried puddle and emptying it into its 

 gaping mouth : it is not surprising that we sometimes see city-bred birds with ruffled 

 plumage and dull eyes, almost too ill to get out of the way of approaching vehicles. 



The nest of the House-Sparrow is placed in any suitable hole or crevice either 

 in buildings, trees, or banks, on projecting bricks amongst ivy growing over walls, 

 on beams in barns against a wall or upright support, in nests of House- and Sand- 

 Martins ; but in nearly all such situations its nest is not characteristic, being 

 either extremely untidy and almost shapeless, or formed like that of most Finches 

 in cup-fashion, though with somewhat less regular walls. The more typical nest 

 is built in the branches of trees, hedges, and (according to Dixon) in furze-bushes ; 

 it is a very bulky bag-shaped structure, the entrance being either close to, or at 

 the top, so that the light falls more or less directly into the cavity : this form of 

 nest is also usually built on beams in barns, and I once found a simply gigantic 



* Henry Stevenson, who quotes an estimate as to a pair of Sparrows destroying 3,400 caterpillars in one 

 week to feed their young, seems not to have been aware of the fact that, only when teaching their offspring 

 to peck, do Sparrows offer insects to them entire. A Sparrow on a fence will feed three or four young in 

 succession without leaving its post. 



