SPARROW VERSUS NATIVE BIRDS. 97 



following instances as having fallen under his observation : Three years ago no less 

 than three pairs of Wrens and as many pairs each of Bluebirds and White-bellied 

 Swallows raised their young in boxes in sight of his windows. The following year 

 about one-half disappeared, and last year not one of these nine pairs of native birds 

 had a representative left within this small area. Not that all the boxes were occupied 

 by the Sparrows, but they claimed possession of all, and by force of numbers re- 

 tained it. In most cases the former occupants, finding their homes already in the 

 possession of their enemies, appeared to make no struggle to regain them, a recon- 

 naissance of the field apparently satisfying them of the hopelessness of any such 

 attempt; in other cases they were not given up without long and and hard-fought 

 battles. On inquiry he found that similar incidents have been observed in neigh- 

 boring parts of Cambridge. Besides this, instances of uncalled-for aggression had 

 come to his notice, one of which he himself had observed. Last year a colony of 

 Sparrows, not content with three times as many boxes as they had use for — to gain 

 possession of which they had diepossessed wrens and swallows — attacked a pair of 

 Robins that very unwisely, as it proved, had chosen a nesting site in an elm close to 

 this pugnacious colony, by which they were so persistently harassed that they had to 

 abandon their completed nest and its, to them, precious contents. 



One error into which many observers who are not ornithologists have 

 fallen lies in the failure to discriminate between the abundance of birds 

 in towns and cities in time of migration and in the breeding season. 

 Thus such a visitor to the national capital during the first week in 

 April, 1887, would have been struck at once with the number of Eobins 

 in all the parks, and might have come to the hasty conclusion that there- 

 fore the English Sparrow had no serious influence on them. 



There were undoubtedly many thousands of Robins in the city of 

 Washington at that time. On the grass ground in front of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, on the lawns of the Capitol, and in many of the other 

 parks, hundreds were in sight at once, and they seldom appeared to be 

 molested by the Sparrows. But no sooner had these migrating flocks 

 passed northward and the intending settlers arrived in smaller num- 

 bers from the South than the Sparrows began to show their natural 

 disposition, and, as a result, the Robins which remained and nested in 

 the beautifnl parks, numbering hundreds of acres, probably did not 

 average one pair to every ten acres of suitable ground. 



One other egregious blunder, for which there is still less excuse, is 

 the claim so often put forward that in other countries, notably in Eng- 

 land and Germany, the Sparrows live in peace with all birds, whereas 

 if they were the terrible foes represented they would have expelled all 

 these birds long ago. In general, such statements may be set down 

 at once as totally untrue as regards the facts. The Sparrow in Europe 

 is very much the same bird as in the United States, certainly no bet- 

 ter. And wherever there is any marked difference in habits such a dif- 

 ference is usually attributable to the fact that the conditions of ex- 

 istence are entirely unlike. On this point Dr. Elliott Coues says : 



In Europe these birds are part and parcel of the natural fauna of the country. 

 They are not, as I understand, petted, pampered, and seduously protected from their 

 natural enemies, as they are here. They shift lor themselves, find certain sources of 

 8404— Bull. 1 7 



