THE INSPIRING SPARROWS. 31 



and sometimes I have found the nest with eggs after 

 the first week in August ; and a month later these 

 young birds are killed by the dozens when the 

 slaughtering of reed-birds is the sportsman's popular 

 pastime. Bluebirds, orioles, and king-birds also are 

 all too apt to gather about the marshes and, of 

 course, share the same fate. 



It frequently happens, in autumn, when the mi- 

 gratory birds are beginning to move off and the 

 hosts from the mountains come swooping down upon 

 the plain, that the marshes and river-shore and every 

 haunt of the bird we have been considering are in- 

 vaded by a small, brown, mottled species that is 

 everywhere known, when known at all, as the savanna 

 sparrow. It never essays to more than a cheerful 

 chirp, even when at home and happily married ; but 

 now, here on the brown, frost-bitten meadows, they 

 chirp with an impatience that borders on fault-finding, 

 and so to the rambler are interesting only by reason 

 of their numbers. I have seen hundreds of spar- 

 rows drifting like dead leaves along the fences of 

 our upland fields, but here in the immediate river- 

 valley it is sometimes a matter of thousands. A 

 "wave of migration," as the bird-men call it, and 

 correctly, but it is also a general disturbance of the 

 regular order of affairs that must be distressing to 

 the resident bird-world. If we have an early winter 

 a rare occurrence these savanna sparrows do 

 not stay long, but when autumnal conditions prevail 

 until New Year's, we may find a few of them almost 

 any day. Sooner or later they all disappear, and 



