230 USE OF SMALL BIRDS. 



same, particularly in early Spring, when he inflicts ruinous 

 injury on the sprouting crops of several plants, is equally 

 true. Sparrows, too, burrow in our stacks, and consume a 

 certain quantity of corn, not, indeed, in the same serious 

 quantities that another bird does, called the Snow-Bunting: 

 these birds, in hard Winters, come from the north in pro- 

 digious flocks, and, where they take up their quarters, become 

 quite a nuisance, not so much by what they consume, as by 

 what they destroy; which they do thus: in search of grain, 

 they frequent the stack, and then seizing the end of a straw, 

 deliberately draw it out. To such a degree has this been 

 done by them, that the base of a rick has been found 

 entirely surrounded by the straw, one end resting on the 

 ground, the other against the stack, as it slid down from 

 the top, and as regularly placed as if by hand : and so com- 

 pletely was the thatching pulled off, that it was found ne- 

 cessary to remove the corn. 



That some guess may be formed of the possible extent of 

 good or evil occasioned by small birds, we annex the result 

 of our own observations, on the precise quantity of food con- 

 sumed by certain birds, either for their own support, or that 

 of their young ; remarking, at the same time, that the dif- 

 ference observed in the instances may be partly accounted for 

 ' by the different quantity of food required by young birds, at 

 different periods of their growth. 



Sparrows feed their young 36 times in an hour, which, 

 calculating at the rate of 14 hours a day, in the long days of 

 Spring and Summer, gives 3,500 times per week ; a number 

 corroborated on the authority of another writer, who cal- 

 culated the number of caterpillars destroyed in a week to be 

 about 3,400. 



Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little 

 green grubs from gooseberry-trees, 23 times in an hour, 

 which, at the same calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a 

 week ; but more grubs than one were usually imparted each 

 time. 



Chaffinches, at the rate of about 35 times an hour, for five 

 or six times together, when they would pause, and not return 



