1901
June 26
(4)
Cambridge, Mass.
  Throughout practically the whole of the region beyond
Harvard Square the chatter and din of the English Sparrows
was ceaseless and in places almost deafening. They were many 
times more numerous than they have ever been in our own 
neighborhood and their presence in such multitudes seemed to 
me to fully account for the marked scarcity of native birds.
Of the latter the Robin and Yellow Warbler appeared to be the 
most numerous and well distributed. I was surprised to find
of the Vireos only the Warbling. The greatest number of 
native birds heard in any one place was at the corner of Hancock
and Harvard Streets where a Robin, a Redstart and a
Yellow Warbler were singing together in a garden. The English
gardener working there told me he occasionally saw
Flickers and Crows in the neighborhood.
  Most of the streets through which we passed have changed
in the past thirty years even less than I had supposed.
Harvard Street, nearly or quite to Inman Street, remains
practically as it was in my High School days. Throughout the Dana
Hill region and between there and the Colleges there are very
many old gardens filled with trees and shrubbery which,
without doubt, would attract large numbers of our native birds
were it not for the teeming multitudes of English Sparrows
which along the lower parts of Harvard Street seem to have
crowed out everything else,even the Robins.