110 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
greenish-yellow tint of its plumage, streaked and 
dashed with darker markings of black and brown. 
It builds, as a rule, in fir-trees, making a delicate 
little nest of down, green moss, etc., with a few 
twigs of the fir outside, and lined with down, hair, 
and feathers. The eggs, usually five in number, 
are very much like a rather small Goldfinch's, 
bluish-white in ground colour, with small spots 
and dashes of reddish-brown and lilac-grey. 
HOUSE SPARROW. 
(Passer domes tic us.) 
The Common Sparrow, as it is only too truly 
called, is found in the neighbourhood of human 
habitations, both in town and country, over a large 
area of Europe, Asia, and Africa, while it has also 
been introduced into North America, Australia, 
and New Zealand, where it has become an even 
worse pest to agriculture than it is in its native 
lands. In Spain, Italy, and other parts of Southern 
Europe its place is taken, wholly or partly, by a 
closely allied species, and it is worth notice that 
even in England it is not found in the villages of 
the highest moorland regions. Its destructiveness 
to grain and other crops, and its habit of ousting 
other and more useful species of birds from their 
