OCTOBER 81 



the brilliant coloring of the male is the visible expres- 

 sion of his greater activity. 



The beak of the sparrow is a cone, the line of the 

 mouth drooping characteristically downward. It is 

 strong, well adapted to crushing grain, yet delicate 

 enough to pick up small objects. The feet are typical 

 of the percher, four slender toes, three in front and one 

 behind. 



In the cities it nests preferably in protected corners 

 of buildings, but since there is not, nowadays, a suf- 

 ficient niunber of such places for the innumerable 

 sparrows, they have learned to build nests in the trees. 

 These nests serve not only for breeding purposes, but 

 also as places of shelter during the colder winter months. 

 In this latitude (Philadelphia) they begin to lay eggs in 

 March, and the young are quite numerous on the ground 

 in May. 



The eggs are bluish gvAj, speckled with brown; five 

 or six in the large feather-lined nest. The mother bird 

 usually occupies a week in dropping the eggs, two 

 weeks in hatching them, another in feeding the young 

 birds in the nest, and still another in feeding them 

 outside. Probably about four broods are raised in a 

 season. 



They eat all kinds of vegetable food, feeding particu- 

 larly on the half-digested grain found by them in the 

 horse droppings of city streets, on buds, on a few insects, 

 but never on hairy caterpillars. 



They are quarrelsome, unclean, and have partially or 

 Avholly exterminated many of our more valuable native 

 birds. ]Srevertheless, since by their enormous breeding 

 capacity they are now with us to stay, let us get what 

 we can out of them by studying them with the children. 



