The Tree Sparrow 295 



Saturday night, February 11, 1905, the thermometer fell 

 to ten degrees below zero and with the sudden change there 

 was a very heavy snow fall. The snow clung to even the 

 smallest twigs of the trees, bending the larger and lower 

 limbs almost to the ground, and the next morning presented 

 one of the most beautiful and weird scenes that I have ever 

 witnessed. It steadily grew colder on Sunday and that night 

 the thermometer fell to seventeen degrees below zero. I was 

 sure that Buzzard's Roost would be wonderfully beautiful that 

 afternoon, and notwithstanding the severe cold, I went out to 

 see it. I did not expect to see many birds, but in this was 

 agreeably surprised. From the interurban car I saw a flock 

 of from two to three hundred crows, and after leaving the car, 

 I had not gone more than an eighth of a mile, until I heard, 

 to my left, a "chipping" noise which I was sure was made by birds. 

 Stepping to the roadside and looking into a garden I dis- 

 covered a flock of about fifty tree sparrows feeding on the 

 weed seed of old weed stalks that stood above the snow, and 

 keeping up their "conversational chatter" and thus "bespeak- 

 ing their good fellowship." 



When they are with us their food consists almost ex- 

 clusively of weed seed. Professor Beal has esti- 

 mated that during the two hundred days they average to re- 

 main in the State of Iowa, reckoning ten sparrows to the 

 square mile and one-fourth of an ounce as the daily ration, 

 they destroy one million seven hundred and fifty thousand 

 pounds or eight hundred and seventy-five tons of weed seed. 

 Contemplate, if you will, what this means to the farmers of 

 that State. 



