TREE SPARROW. 
207 
I NS ESS ORES. 
CONIROSTRES. 
FRINGILLIDJE. 
TREE SPARROW. 
Passer montanus. 
PLATE LIII. FIGS. I. AND II. 
The Tree Sparrow is by no means so rare a bird 
as it has been generally considered by ornithologists. 
It breeds abundantly in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and 
Northumberland, and most probably throughout the 
northern counties. 
Its habits are usually somewhat more retired than 
those of our common sparrow, choosing for its nest holes 
in trees, and not in the immediate neighbourhood of our 
dwellings. A number of nests, found by the Rev. W. 
D. Fox, in Derbyshire, from which he kindly sent me a 
series of varieties of the eggs, were built either in the 
holes of large trees, or those of pollard-willows. 
When at Cullercoats, in Northumberland, Mr. John 
Hancock took me to an old wall surrounding the gardens 
of Whitley Hall, in which a number of the Tree and 
House-sparrows were breeding in common, without any 
distinction as to habit, locality, or nest. 
Mr. Yarrell, quoting the information of the Rev. J. 
Dimock, says, “ These birds frequently build in the thatch 
of a barn, in company with the House-sparrow, not, how¬ 
ever, entering the thatch from the inside of the building 
like them, but by holes in the outside: five or six in¬ 
stances of this sort occurred in one building, and one or 
