SPAKROWS IN THE FIELD. 39 
closely cropped pasture of Bermuda grass with comparatively few 
seeds. Here they gathered such sustenance as they could secure, 
keeping their heads to the blast and looking like so many trout head- 
ing upstream. They apparently preferred to battle with these 
adverse conditions rather than feed from weed stalks, which offered 
plenty of food in sheltered situations. They seemed to have no regard 
for cover. Out in the pasture they hopped about ravenously eating 
seed after seed, hunger having apparently driven away all fear. Moro 
than 200 were thus engaged, chiefly j uncos and tree sparrows, but 
with song sparrows, white-throats, and field sparrows also present. 
They covered the pasture completely, and by consuming an enormous 
quantity of the seeds of the Bermuda grass, or wire-grass as it is 
locally known, prevented in a measure the blowing of the seeds to 
truck land, where this grass is the worst weed of the farm and entails 
an annual expense of 8200 to the owner. 
During the two following days the wind, together with some melt- 
ing, caused bare spots to appear in the snow on the truck land and 
orchards beyond the pasture. The sparrows straightway left the wire- 
grass for the crab-grass, ragweed, and lamb's-quarters that abounded 
in the truck land and orchards. Ground feeding proved to be the 
habitual method, although the white-throats and a song sparrow were 
seen feeding on ragweed stalks, and a junco and a tree sparrow on those 
of lamb's-quarters. Most of the sparrows fed on crab-grass wherever 
it was exposed, and they flocked so thickly in it that one might have 
collected several with a single discharge of a shotgun. A flock of 100 
goldfinches fed with the sparrows. The service rendered by the 300 
birds was doubtless of considerable value: when a large number of 
birds thus work together within a limited area the good is evident. 
In addition to the main body of sparrows, there were certain more 
or less isolated little troops of individuals about various parts of the 
farm. On some poor land back from the river there were about 20 
field sparrows that fed from the exposed culms of broom sedge. During 
the snowy weather no sparrows except tree sparrows were seen with 
them, but afterwards they were joined by juncos and song sparrows. 
Song sparrows, during the coldest and most blustering daj's, were 
seen scatteringly all along the sandy beach of the Potomac between 
the ice sludge and the foot of the river bluff, but almost entirely 
deserted the bushy brooks and fence rows, where- the snow was from 
2 to 3 feet deep. Many repaired to grain barns, where they obtained 
weed seeds, feeding, like the birds in the Bermuda-grass pasture, in 
the worst wind-swept places and with their heads to the blast. Jun- 
<•<» occasionally associated with these song sparrows and often took 
refuge with them in the barns. Several song sparrows were found 
foraging with a flock of 50 English sparrows in the cow yard of the 
stock barn and about the hog pen. One of these and all the English 
sparrows went into various parts of the barn in search of grain. 
