Birds by Land and Sea 



afford, or does not care, to nurse its aches and pains 

 like the more genteel classes of avian society. 

 Sparrows, tailless and with plumage in every stage 

 of rustiness, will be encountered any time between 

 now and the end of September ; but it will be in 

 the open, for your sparrow does not care who sees 

 him without his tail. Not only in its sturdiness, 

 but in its prolificacy also, the sparrow ranks as the 

 proletarian among birds. One brood follows another 

 in quick succession, and it would not be safe to fix 

 a date when the last blind-eyed, pot-bellied youngster 

 will have fallen from the gutter to feed expectant 

 cats. One is tempted, with all due reverence, to 

 wonder what image was present in the mind of the 

 evangelist when he wrote that not a sparrow " falleth 

 on the ground," etc. 



Where are the starlings in July ? From the 

 eaves where they nested they went down into the 

 fields, and one met them there for a short time break- 

 ing in their young to feed themselves. These young 

 ones carried matters with a high hand, even to the 

 point of charging the mother who reared them, in 

 their lazy importunity to be fed. But the month 

 is not old ere bands of starlings collect in the early 

 evening, and make off for some place of roosting, 

 reminding one of the great bands which later in the 

 year go through their aerial exercises together in the 

 evening and then depart in a body, to be succeeded 

 by similar bodies, all flying on the same line for 

 some common roost. Winter brings great numbers 



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