70 BiftDS BUOWN ABOVE AND WHITE BELOW. 



TREE-SPARROW.— Form, like the House-Sparrow. 

 Length, 5i inches. Head chestnut ; upper parts 

 brown streaked with black ; wings and tail brown, 

 the former with white double wing -bar; throat 

 black ; sides of neck whitish, with detached tri- 

 angular black patch ; under parts grayish-white ; bill 

 conical. Resident. 



Eggs. — 4—6, grayish-white, but almost entirely 

 hidden by fine mottling of various shades of brown ; 

 •75 X -54 inch (plate 124). 



Nest. — Of hay lined with feathers, and placed in 

 holes in pollard-trees, in the outside of thatched 

 roofs, in openings in tiles, and in holes in cliffs. 



The Tree-Sparrow is far rarer than the House- 

 Sparrow, occurring pretty generally in the eastern 

 parts of England and Scotland, locally elsewhere 

 in these countries, and rarely in Wales and Ireland. 

 It is for the most part a bird of the open country, 

 nesting in trees — often pollard ones — in some suit- 

 able cavity or on the branches, although it is suf- 

 ficiently familiar at times to make use of bams 

 and outhouses for nesting purposes. By its brisk 

 chirpings, its quarrelsome character, its habit of 

 catching flies on the wing in the summer months 

 and banding together in autumn in the stand- 

 ing grain and stubble, it resembles the House- 

 Sparrow. From the latter, however, it may at 

 once be distinguished by the chestnut colov/r of 

 the head, there being in the Tree -Sparrow no 

 suggestion of the ashy crown and nape of the 

 House-Sparrow. 



