TREE SPARROW 297 



to botanists, and at length matures its hard, dry seed- 

 vessels, which, if noticed, are hardly supposed to contain 

 seed. But there is no shrub nor weed which is not known 

 to some bird. Though you may have never noticed it, the 

 tree sparrow comes from the north in the winter straight 

 to this shrub, and confidently shakes its panicle, and then 

 feasts on the fine shower of seeds that falls from it. 



Jan. 24, 1860. As I stand at the south end of J. P. 

 B.'s moraine, I watch six tree sparrows, which come from 

 the wood and alight and feed on the ground, which is 

 there bare. They are only two or three rods from me, 

 and are incessantly picking and eating an abundance 

 of the fine grass (short-cropped pasture grass) on that 

 knoll, as a hen or goose does. I see the stubble an inch 

 or two long in their bills, and how they stuff it down. 

 Perhaps they select chiefly the green parts. So they 

 vary their fare and there is no danger of their starving. 

 These six hopped round for five minutes over a space 

 a rod square before I put them to flight, and then I 

 noticed, in a space only some four feet square in that 

 rod, at least eighteen droppings (white at one end, the 

 rest more slate-colored). So wonderfully active are they 

 in their movements, both external and internal. They 

 do not suffer for want of a good digestion, surely. No 

 doubt they eat some earth or gravel too. So do par- 

 tridges eat a great deal. These birds, though they have 

 bright brown and buff backs, hop about amid the little 

 inequalities of the pasture almost unnoticed, such is 

 their color and so humble are they. 



[See also under Vesper Sparrow, p. 285 ; Song 

 Sparrow, pp. 309, 310; Sparrows, pp. 323, 324.] 



