TREE-SPARROW. INSESSORES. PASSER, 301 



been known as indigenous, although many authors have as- 

 sorted the contrary} and have described it as numerous in 

 Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. It may indeed be 

 found in each of these counties, but not in such numbers as 

 might naturally be inferred from the accounts of preceding 

 writers. MONTAGU, in the Supplement to his Ornithological 

 Dictionary, has given a very minute and interesting descrip- 

 tion of the peculiar habits of this bird, and has proved that 

 the female is in plumage not distinguishable from the male 

 bird, although former writers had described it as differing in 

 the same degree as the female of the Common Sparrow does 

 from the male of that species. 



The eastern, and some of the northern, counties seem to 

 be the extent of its range in this country, as I have not been 

 able to trace its residence in any of the southern or western 

 ones. Specimens have been sent to me from the neighbour- 

 hood of Cambridge, and I have seen it in parts of the county 

 of Durham, but not farther to the northward *. It is a bird 

 of retired habits, and is never found to frequent villages or 

 other dwellings like the common species, but is generally to 

 be met with where old trees (particularly pollards, hollowed 

 by decay) are abundant, as in the holes of these it finds a 

 congenial retreat, and proper situation for its nest, of which Nest, &c. 

 the materials are hay and straw intermixed, with a lining of 

 feathers. 



The eggs are four or five in number, similar in colour to 

 those of the Ho use- Sparrow, but rather smaller. The food Food. 

 of this species consists of various seeds and grain, and the 

 buds of trees ; but during the breeding season it destroys 

 quantities of larvae, moths, and others of the insect tribe, on 

 which its callow young are principally supported. Its form 

 is more slender than that of the preceding bird, and its mo- 

 tions full of spirit and activity ; like it also, the Tree-Spar- 



* Several instances of its capture in the neighbourhood of Newcastle 

 have since been communicated to me. 



