THE SPAEEOWS 



197 



with me to the country roads, and Usten for three 

 minutes to the dehcious melody that pours from 

 the quivering throat of a Song-Sparrow.' When 

 he feels well, he will perch on the top of a hedge, 

 secure a good grip on a comfortable twig, point 

 his beak skyward at an angle of sixty degrees, 

 and sing as if trying to burst his little throat. 

 Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright justly calls him "the 

 darling among the song-birds," and "the most 

 constant singer among our northern birds. ' In 

 some localities, at least, they sing all summer long. 

 In Iowa I have heard them a thousand times, 

 bravely piping and trilling in the sweltering 

 heat of July and August, when other birds were 

 silent, and have been moved to wonder at the 

 amount of energy stored up in their little bodies. 



I think the best way to identify this bird is by 

 its singing. Pick out the sparrow in gray and 

 brown which sings to surpass all others, and it 

 will be a Song-Sparrow. Its home is the eastern 

 half of North America, from northern Jlanitoba 

 to Mexico. West of the Rocky Mountains it 

 becomes the Mountain Song-Sparrow. In the 

 southwestern deserts it grows pale, — to match 

 its environment, — and becomes the Desert 

 Song-Sparrow. There are thirteen species of 

 the Song-Sparrow genus, — or at least that num- 

 ber have been described, and Alaska is yet to be 

 heard from. 



The White-Throated Sparrow^ is the spe- 

 cies which comes next in general attractive- 

 ness. It is a very pert and pretty bird — for a 

 sparrow, and its oddly marked head is easily 

 identified. It wears a white goatee and a black 

 cap, and on the latter is laid a broad arrow, in 

 white. A white line comes down along the cen- 

 tre line of the head, and another comes forward 

 over each eye, until the three come together at 

 the base of the upper mandible. The song of 

 this bird is pleasing, and nearly every self-re- 

 specting ornithologist translates it into English 

 to suit his or her fancy; but, to tell the truth, 

 the White-Throat never will win a prize as a 

 great singer. 



The English Sparrow.' — Let me dip my pen 

 in blu ' vitriol; for my temperature rises at the 

 thought of writing the name. Daily we see 

 the unclean little wretches grubbing in the filth 



1 M d-o-syii' za jas-ci-a'ta. Length, 6^ inches. 

 ^ Zo-no-lri'rhi-a al-bi-col'lis . Ijength, 6i inches. 

 ' Pas'ser do-mes'ti-cus. Length, about 6 inches. 



and microbes of the street, where no American 

 bird will humble itself to feed. After twenty 

 years of aocjuaintanoe, I am obliged to say that 

 I never saw one catch a worm, a caterpillar, or 

 an insect of any kind. When the elm-trees are 

 loaded with tent caterpillars, an English Spar- 

 row will let them crawl all over him, and not 

 kill one. Instead of ranging out into the open 

 fields and hunting for clean weed-seeds, this 

 bird revels in the foulest dirt of the street. It 

 does, however, manage to eat the seeds of the 



WHITE-THRO.\TED SPARROW. 



dandelion, when the heads are filling, in April 

 and May. 



The English Sparrow is not beautiful, either 

 in form or plumage, and it cannot sing a note. 

 Its tastes are low and vulgar. It is quarrelsome, 

 and crowds out many other species of small 

 perching-birds. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, when 

 Mr. Frank Bond killed all the English Sparrows, 

 and kept them killed, other perching-birds flocked 

 into the city in great numbers, and many spe- 

 cies bred there. The more persistently these 



