HOUSE SPARROW. 525 
in his efforts to extricate himself, fell from his nest, and 
hung suspended below it. He was observed for some time 
making prodigious exertions to escape, but in vain; and 
his remains are now to be seen, gibbeted at his own door, 
and fluttering in the wind, whilst the straws of his nest 
project from the eye-hole above his head.” 
The Sparrow, as before observed, is seldom seen far 
from the habitations of men; but as summer advances, 
and the young birds of the year are able to follow the old 
ones, they become gregarious, flying in flocks together to 
the nearest field of wheat, as soon as the corn is suffi- 
ciently hardened to enable them to pick it out, and here 
for a time they are in good quarters; but when the corn 
is housed, and the fields gleaned, their supply being thus 
cut off, they return to the vicinity of houses to seek again 
the adventitious meal which the habitations of men are 
likely to afford them. 
The House Sparrow is common over the whole of the 
United Kingdom, including the islands of Orkney and 
Shetland ; it is common also in Denmark, Norway, and 
Sweden, where, M. Nilsson says, it infests every house. 
From thence southward its range is extended to Spain, 
Portugal, and North Africa; in the south-east it is found 
in Italy, Corfu, Dalmatia, and the Ionian Islands. Mr. 
H. E. Strickland says, that our species,—for there are 
three others in Europe,—is the Common House Sparrow of 
the Levant; and the Zoological Society have received 
specimens from Trebizond and the Nubian Mountains. 
Colonel Sykes includes this species in his Catalogue of the 
Birds of the Dukhun, from whence he brought specimens, 
and it has also been received in this country from the 
Himalaya Mountains, from Nepal and the vicinity of 
Calcutta. 
