319 

 NOTES ON THE TREE SPARROW. 



F. B. WHITLOCK, 

 Beeston, Notts. 



I HAVE read Mr. Fawcett's paper on the Tree Sparrow in Durham 

 with much interest, as I find the birds in his district differ very 

 materially in their habits from our local birds. 



I am surprised to read of the Tree Sparrow {Passer montanus) 

 nesting in Durham so early as February and March, especially as 

 numbers of them ' are only spring . . . visitants to this county, 

 arriving here about the latter part of March and the beginning of 

 April' Are we to assume that it is the resident birds that breed so 

 early, and that the later broods are the products of the spring 

 visitors? If so, can Mr. Fawcett say with certainty that the Tree 

 Sparrow generally rears two broods in a season, especially as the 

 nests under observation were totally robbed of their contents at 

 various times. May it not be that the supposed second broods were 

 the result of a first (or even second) attempt at incubation being 

 unsuccessful. 



Mr. Fawcett observes that the House Sparrow {P. domesticus) 

 is very common where the colony of Tree Sparrows exists in the 

 Browney valley, and I must confess that when I read his paper 

 I think he has been mistaken in some cases in his identity of the 

 species. The fact of the Tree Sparrow nesting in the 'forks of 

 branches, and amongst the branches ... of planes, oaks, . . . 

 and in hedges and bushes,' points more to the habits of the House 

 Sparrow. In Notts, with rare exceptions, nests in dense bushes 

 have proved to be House Sparrows' nests ; and in the case of nests 

 in the forks and branches of oaks, apple and pear trees, I have never 

 known the rule to vary. Since writing my first paper, I have 

 discovered a large colony of Tree Sparrows nesting in some small 

 and very dense hollies, by the Midland Railway near Attenborough, 

 but were it not for the old birds flying off, the nests would escape 

 the observation of an ordinary passenger, so dark are the interiors of 

 the trees. These nests all contained young in the middle of June. 



With regard to the size of Tree Sparrows' eggs, Mr. Fawcett 

 writes : ' The eggs in some cases smaller than those of its relative.' 

 After comparing a large number of Tree Sparrows' eggs with those of 

 its ally, I find that only large eggs of the Tree Sparrow equal small 

 eggs of the House Sparrow ; occasionally extreme measurements will 

 overlap, but this is exceptional. In the case of the birds breeding 

 at Attenborough, it was the smallness of the Sparrows' eggs taken 



Oct. 1890. 



