The English Sparrow 



76~(history in s. Calif.) ; Grinnell, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. II, 1915, pp. 111-112 

 (history of spread throughout Calif.); Phillips, J. C, Auk, vol. xxxii., 1915, pp. 51-59 

 (crit. compar. of Old World and Amer. spec); Grinnell, Amer. Nat., vol. liii., 1919, 

 pp. 468-473 (comment on occurrence in Death Valley). 



WHAT a piece of mischief is the Sparrow! how depraved in instinct! 

 in presence how unwelcome! in habit how unclean! in voice how repulsive! 

 in combat how moblike and despicable ! in courtship how wanton and con- 

 temptible! in increase how limitless and menacing! the pest of the farmer! 

 the plague of the city! the bane of the bird-world! the despair of the 

 philanthropist! the thrifty and insolent beneficiary of misguided senti- 

 ment! the lawless and defiant object of impotent hostility too late aroused ! 

 Out upon thee, thou shapeless, senseless, heartless, misbegotten tyrant! 

 thou tedious and infinite alien ! thou myriad cuckoo, who dost by thy con- 

 suming presence bereave us daily of a million dearer children ! Out upon 

 thee, and woe the day! 



Without question the most deplorable event in the history of Ameri- 

 can ornithology was the introduction of the English Sparrow. The 

 extinction of the Greak Auk, the passing of the Wild Pigeon and the 

 Turkey, — sad as these are, they are trifles compared to the wholesale 

 reduction of our smaller birds, which is due to the invasion of this wretched 

 foreigner. To be sure he was invited to come, but the offense is all the 

 more rank because it was partly human. His introduction was effected 

 in part by people who ought to have known better, and would, doubtless, 

 if the science of ornithology had reached its present status as long ago as 

 the early Fifties. The maintenance and prodigious increase of the pest is 

 still due in a measure to the imbecile sentimentality of people who build 

 bird-houses and throw out crumbs for "the dear little birdies," and then 

 care nothing whether honest birds or scalawags get them. Such people 

 belong to the same class as those who drop kittens on their neighbors' 

 door-steps, because they wouldn't have the heart to kill them themselves, 

 you know. 



The increase of this bird in the United States is, to a lover of birds, 

 simply frightful. Their fecundity is amazing and their adaptability 

 apparently limitless. Mr. Barrows, in a special report prepared under the 

 direction of the Government, estimates that the increase of a single pair, 

 if unhindered, would amount in ten years to 275,716,983,698 birds. The 

 number actually alive in America today must run well into the billions. 



As to its range, we note that its subjugation of the East has long 

 been accomplished, and that the occupation of the West now involves 

 every considerable town and village. According to Professor Grinnell, to 

 whose careful review 1 I am largely indebted, the English Sparrow, having 



1 Pacific Coast Avifauna, no. 11, Oct.. 1915, p. 111. 

 224 



