Notes from Field and Study 



177 



the sound. It occurred to me that pos- 

 sibly this might be common to all the 

 Starling family. 



Last spring, I was astonished to see an 

 American Robin in Richmond Park, not 

 far from London. It collected mud, which 

 it carried into a high tree, apparently for 

 its nest. One bird only was seen; it re- 

 mained for some weeks, then disappeared. 

 I noticed that it always ran when on the 

 ground. Does your Robin never hop? 

 Our English Thrushes, as a rule, hop. I 

 was not able to tell the sex. Once I heard 

 it call loudly, something like pink, pink, 

 pink, a sound distantly resembling the 

 note of our Blackbird (which is, of course, 

 a Thrush). I never heard it sing. I believe 

 that Lord Northcliffe, the proprietor of 

 "The Daily Mail," introduced several 

 American Robins into Surrey, not very 

 many miles from where I saw this bird, 

 a 'few years ago, and there have been cases 

 of its appearance in different parts of 

 England since, notably in Cumberland, 

 where I believe it bred. It would be inter- 

 esting to know where it migrates in the 

 winter. 



A few years ago, I was shown the stuffed 

 body of a Bluebird, which had been seen 

 in a Hampshire orchard and, of course, 

 shot! It may possibly have escaped from 

 some aviary; but I am under the im- 

 pression that your Government forbids 

 the exporting of Bluebirds. Oddly enough, 

 a year or two after this, somebody wrote 

 to a newspaper, from a different part of 

 England, describing a strange bird which 

 had appeared in his garden, and which 

 seemed to have been, again, a Bluebird. 

 It is difficult to imagine that these birds 

 could have been blown so far out of their 

 course of migration, so I imagine they 

 must have escaped from some aviary. — 

 J. Rudge Harding, London, England. 



The Same Old St Dry 



This year, I erected quite a number of 

 bird-houses around my home, in an effort 

 to have some interesting tenants. One of 

 these nest-boxes was a pine stub brought 

 from the woods and placed in a maple in 



the front yard. Early in the spring, when 

 the Bluebirds were home-hunting, they 

 espied this natural cavity, and at once 

 laid claim to it. About the same time, a 

 pair of Sparrows (Passer domesticus) got 

 a notion that they needed the same place, 

 and started to oust the Bluebirds. Battle 

 after battle ensued for the possession of 

 the nest and, after about three or four 

 days, the Bluebirds seemed to have estab- 

 lished supremacy. At any rate, the 

 Sparrows desisted from their attacks to a 

 certain extent. 



On April 4, I climbed up to the stub, 

 and saw that the Bluebirds had succeeded 

 in making a nest, and also that it con- 

 tained two eggs. The next day, I found the 

 remains of the eggs on the ground and, 

 upon looking in the nest, I found that it, 

 too, was torn up. Undoubtedly this was 

 the work of the Sparrows, as they were 

 seen nearby, and also going into the nest. 

 The Bluebirds were seen only once during 

 the day (April 5), and never afterward. 

 From then until the time of this writing 

 (April 16), the Sparrows never used the 

 cavity as a nesting-place, and have been 

 seen around it but very little. 



This little incident shows the English 

 Sparrows in true colors. The domineering 

 and driving-out instinct is prominently 

 shown; they cannot endure to see any 

 other pair of small birds nesting in their 

 neighborhood. — Ralph W. Jackson, Cam- 

 bridge, Md. 



House Sparrow and Starling 



A few mornings ago, a House Sparrow 

 and a Starling were noticed by some com- 

 muters, feeding on insects on the lawn in 

 front of the railway station. The curious 

 way in which the Sparrow obtained his 

 food being noted by one who was aware 

 of my interest in birds, he called my 

 attention to it. The Starling had, at the 

 time I started to watch, a large grub of 

 some sort in his bill. The Sparrow was 

 trailing behind, for all the world like a dog 

 trotting at his master's heels. Carefully 

 the Starling searched every spear of grass; 

 finally one bearing an insect turned up. 



