THE SPARROW: AN INDICTMENT. 
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used nest hole, which the accumulated refuse of several years 
has rendered untenable for the martin. 
The cry of the house martins when the sparrows have turned 
them out is piteous to hear. And the exasperating part of it is 
that one can do nothing to help them. To shoot both sparrows 
at once while the martins are still flying about the nest would 
be the only way of setting matters right. But the sparrows are 
far too wide awake to permit this. I have often killed the one, 
but never the pair, on the same day. You may frighten them 
away for a few minutes, but it is useless ; the martins are not 
clever enough to arrange that one of them shall always be at 
home ; and so being both absent together they cannot prevent 
the entrance of the sparrows. There is only one course to be 
taken, and it seems a pity, too, but there is no hope of restoring 
the nest to the martins — it must be knocked down. The per- 
sistence with which the sparrows occupy a martin’s nest when 
once in is fiendish. I shot the hen once, and in a couple of 
days there was another : then I shot the cock, but the hen got 
another. We might have gone on like that all the summer, but 
I lost patience and destroyed the nest. In another nest — not a 
martin’s — I shot the cock twice, but it did not make the slightest 
difference, a third was at once started ; and I had to fill the 
hole up with stones and mortar before I could stop them. I 
once put some bird lime in at the entrance of a house-martin’s 
nest which contained young sparrows, thinking to catch the old 
ones. But no, they pulled out all the materials which the lime 
had touched before they went inside. It is a difficult matter to 
shoot the old birds, because they are so cautious 'and cunning ; 
and here, at least, they are not to be caught in a trap. 
The incessant chirrup of the cock as he sits beside his nest 
calling for a mate is extremely tiresome, especially at five o’clock 
in the morning. And the grating alarm note, chct, chct, diet, 
very quickly repeated, is especially annoying when one is watch- 
ing some other bird and wishes to remain hidden and unsus- 
pected. One of the objects of the Society is “ to preserve from 
unnecessary destruction such wild birds, animals and plants as 
are harmless, beautiful, or rare.” The sparrow is neither. But 
the house-martin is harmless and beautiful, and will soon be 
rare if the sparrows are not proceeded against. 
To sum up the case against them. The sparrows don’t 
sing and are not pretty; they are untidy, impudent and cruel; 
they live by theft, and, worse than all, they drive good birds 
away. Let the sparrows be destroyed. 
Aubrey Edwards. 
