no Birds Every Child Should Know 
whistle well enough to imitate it. Few birds 
can rival the musical ecstacy. 
Artlessly self-confident, not at all bashful^ 
the song sparrow mounts to a conspicuous 
perch when he sings, rather than let his efforts 
be muffled by foliage. Don’t mistake him for 
an English sparrow; notice his distinguishing 
marks : the fine dark streaks on his light breast 
tend to form a larger blotch in the centre. You 
see him singing on the extended branch of some 
low tree, on the topmost twig of a bush, on 
a fence, or a piazza railing from which he dives 
downward into the grass, or flies straight along 
into the bushes, his tail working like a pump 
handle as if to help his flight. Very rarely he 
flies upward. Diving into a bush is one of his 
specialties. He best likes to live in regions 
near water. 
The song sparrows that come almost every 
day in the year among many other birds to my 
piazza roof for waste canary seed and such 
delicacies, show refreshing spirit in driving 
off the English sparrows who, let it be recorded, 
can get not a morsel until the song sparrows are 
abundantly satisfied. One of the latter is quite 
able to keep off half a dozen of his English 
cousins. How does he do it? Not by his 
superior size, for the measurements of both 
birds show that they are about the same length 
although the song sparrow’s slightly longer and 
