518 
TREE SPARROW. 
mounting in the air, it either returns to the ground or pitches on some 
low bush. The Tree Pipit generally makes a nest amongst the high 
grass or green wheat, and resides wholly in the more cultivated parts, 
and that only where there are trees. The nest is composed of dry 
grass, fibrous plants, and sometimes a little moss, and lined with fine 
dry grass and horse-hair. 7Te eggs are four in number, of a dirty 
bluish white, thickly blotched, and spotted with purplish brown. 
We have found this bird as far west as Devonshire, but rarely in 
Cornwall ; also in the westernmost parts of South Wales, and in most 
of the southern parts of England ; but no where so plentiful as in the 
north of Wiltshire. 
TREE SPARROW (Passer montanus, Ray.) 
* Fringilla montana, Linn. Syst. 1. p. 234. 37. — Gmel. Syst. 1. p. 925. sp. 27. — 
Lath. Ind. Orn. 1. p. 433. sp. 2— Passer montanus, Raii, %n. p. 87. 15. — 
Briss. 3. p. 79. — Loxia Hamburgia, Gmel. Syst. 1. p. 854. sp. 68. — Le Friquet, 
Buff. Ois. 3. p. 489. t. 29. f. 2. — Ih. pi. Enl. 267. fig. 1. — La Ilamboureux, 
Buff. Ois. 4. p. 398. — Gros-Bec Friquet, Temm. Man. d’Orn. 1. p. 354. — Der 
Feldsperling, Bechst. Naturg. Deut. 3. p. 124. — Meyer, Tasschenb. Deut. 1. 
p. 158 — Frisch, Yog. t. 7. f. 2. male. — De Ringmusch, Sepp. Nederl. Vbg. p. 
79. — Hamburgh Tree-Creeper, Albin, 3. t. 24. — Hamburgh Grosbeak, Lath. 
Syn. 3. p. 149. 64. — Tree, or Mountain Sparrow, Br. Zool. 1. No. 128. — Arct. 
Zool. 2. No. 246. — Will. (Angl.) p. 252. t. 25. — Lewin’s Br. Birds, 2. t. 78. — 
Lath. Syn. 3. p. 252. 2. — Ib. Supp. — Don. Br. Birds, 4. t. 88. — Bewick's Br. 
Birds, 1. p. 158. — Shaw’s Zool. 9. p. 432. t. 64. f. 2. — Selby, pi. 55. fig. 2. p. 
267.* 
This species is rather less than the house sparrow ; length five inches 
and a half. Bill black ; irides greyish hazel. The head and nape chest- 
nut ; chin black ; a spot of the same colour behind the eye ; the upper 
parts of the body rufous-brown, spotted with black, inclining to greenish 
towards the rump ; sides of the neck, the breast, and under parts, 
dusky white ; wing coverts rufous, edged with black, and crossed with 
two bars of white ; the greater coverts black, with ferruginous edges ; 
quills blackish, with rufous edges ; tail even at the end, colour rufous- 
brown ; legs pale yellow. 
This species may be considered as one of the most local of our indi- 
genous birds ; and is, we suspect, by no means plentiful in any part of 
England ; but as the circumstance of house sparrows sometimes making 
their nest in trees, has occasioned an opinion that they are a different 
species, and have frequently been entitled Tree Sparrow, it is extremely 
difficult to trace the true Passer montanus. 
The Tree Sparrow appears to be much inferior in size to the house 
sparrow, although the difference in weight is only about a dram, this 
being six drams ; and the length is inferior by half an inch, being five 
inches and a half ; with no discrimination of sexes by size, or by 
