OLD FRIENDS IN NEW PLACES 
stalk, and dropping upon the ground where the seed is 
scattered, with many a suspicious flip of wing and flirt of 
tail. A dozen or more are soon hurriedly feeding again, 
now and then running spitefully at one another, as if the 
aggressors felt a prior claim, but not actually coming to 
blows. 
When the dry grass and weeds cover the seed a song 
sparrow may be seen now and then executing a quick 
movement upon it with both feet, a short double jump 
forwards and backwards. This is the way the sparrow 
scratches — a crude and awkward way, certainly. She 
has not yet learned to stand alternately upon one foot and 
scratch with the other, as do the hen and all other true 
scratchers, and she probably never will. The sparrows, 
and many other birds, move the two feet together. They 
are hoppers, and not walkers or runners. Such birds make 
a poor show of scratching. The chewink scratches in the 
same way, but being a much larger bird, she rakes or kicks 
obtruding weeds about quite successfully. 
In less than two minutes the birds again take the alarm 
and dart away to their weedy refuge. 
This is the habit of all birds that feed in numbers 
in this way in open places. Snow buntings, juncoes, 
sparrows, reed-birds, blackbirds — all are haunted 
by a vague sense of impending danger when they are 
feeding, and are given to sudden flights to cover, 
or to circling in the air. 
I remember that the flocks of passenger pigeons 
that I used to see in my youth would burst up from 
the ground when they were feeding, at short inter- 
vals, in the same sudden, alarmed way. It is easy 
to see how the fear of all ground-feeders has become 
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