Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
Unlike most of the sparrows, the little chippy frequents high 
trees, where its nest is built quite as often as in the low bushes 
of the garden. The horse-hair, which always lines the grassy 
cup that holds its greenish-blue, speckled eggs, is alone responsi- 
ble for the name hair-bird, and not the chippy’s hair-like trill, as 
some suppose. 
English Sparrow 
(Passer domesticus) Finch family 
Called also: HOUSE SPARROW 
Length—6, 33 inches. 
Male—Ashy above, with black and chestnut stripes on back and 
shoulders. Wings have chestnut and white bar, bordered 
by faint black line. Gray crown, bordered from the eye 
backward and on the nape by chestnut. Middle of throat 
and breast black. Underneath grayish white. 
Female—Paler; wing-bars indistinct, and without the black mark- 
ing on throat and breast. 
Range—Around the world. Introduced and naturalized in Amer- 
ica, Australia, New Zealand. 
Migrations—Constant resident. 
‘* Of course, no self-respecting ornithologist will condescend 
to enlarge his list by counting in the English sparrow—too pes- 
tiferous to mention,” writes Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all 
bird neighbors is any one more within the scope of this book 
than the audacious little gamin that delights in the companion- 
ship of humans even in their most noisy city thoroughfares P 
In a bulletin issued by the Department of Agriculture it is 
shown that the progeny of a single pair of these sparrows might 
amount to 275,716,983,698 in ten years! Inasmuch as many 
pairs were liberated in the streets of Brooklyn, New York, in 
1851, when the first importation was made, the day is evidently 
not far off when these birds, by no means meek, ‘‘shall inherit 
the earth.” 
In Australia Scotch thistles, English sparrows, and rabbits, 
three most unfortunate importations, have multiplied with equal 
rapidity until serious alarm fills the minds of the colonists. But 
in England a special committee appointed by the House of Com- 
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