Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

Once we played a pretty trick on the sparrows. Knowing their preference for sweets, we placed a saucer of black New Orleans molasses on the table, with a few crumbs sprinkled on the top. Of course the birds took the crumbs, and of course, again, they took a taste of the molasses. It wasn't a day before they dipped their beaks into the molasses that had now no sprinkling of crumbs, and seemed surprised at its lack of shape. It tasted good, and yet they couldn't pick it up like crumbs. Then they took to leaving the tip of the bill in the edge of it and swallowing like any person of sense. When they were done they flew away with the molasses dripping from their faces and beaks in a laughable style, returning almost immediately with more birds.

The fact is, a sparrow is a boy when it comes to eating. Were it not for its good appetite, it couldn't put up with "just anything." Sparrows love the towns and cities because they find crumbs there. Our friend the baker knows them, and many a meal do they find ready spread at his back door. So does Bridget the cook, and even Lung Wo, if their hearts happen to have a soft place for the birds. As for the boy around the corner, who walks about on crutches, he knows all about the sparrows' preferences. In fact, sparrows seem to have a special liking for boys on crutches. One little fellow we knew used to lay his crutch down flat on the ground and place food up and down on it when the sparrows were hungry in the morning. And the crutch came to be the "family board," around which the birds gathered, be the crutch laid flat or tilted aslant on the doorstep. In this way Johnny of the crippled foot came to have a good understanding with the birds, and many a quiet hour was spent in their company. Johnny may turn out to be a great ornithologist some day, all on account of his crutch. What will it matter that he may never shoulder a gun and wander off to the woods to shoot "specimens"? His knowledge of bird ways will serve a better purpose than a possible gun. It was Johnny who first told us to notice how a sparrow straddles his little stick legs far apart when he walks, spreading his toes in a comical way.

Eastern and Western song-sparrows differ, and so do individual birds everywhere—not only in their songs, but in the distribution of specks and stripes on their clothes. What we have said about our song-sparrows may not wholly apply to the family elsewhere. These differences lead bird-lovers to study each of the birds about his own door and forests without placing too much credit upon what others say.

There is much of the year when sparrows live almost solely on seeds, and this is the time when they join hands with the farmer, so to speak, and help him with the thistles and other weeds, by work at the seed tufts and pods. Sparrows love to run in and out of holes and cracks and between cornstalks and dry woodpiles. It was this habit of peeping into everything, on the part of the birds, that led the olden poet to write:

"I love the sparrows' ways to watch
Upon the cotter's sheds.
So here and there pull out the thatch
That they may hide their heads."

It was a pretty idea and a charitable one, that of the poet's. In a country where roofs are shingled with thatch, or dry sticks and leaves overlapping, the sparrows are familiar residents; and where somebody remembers to "pull out the thatch" or make a loose little corner on purpose, they sleep all night. We have ourselves made many a pile of brush on purpose for the sparrows.

The white-crowned sparrows winter with us, going far up the Alaskan coast to nest in the spring, as do also the tree-sparrow, the golden-crowned, savanna, and some others, including the beautiful fox-sparrow. These birds arrive in the Far North as soon as the rivers are open, and to the gold-seekers, who get to their dreary work with pick and spade, are like friends from home. Many a homesick miner stops a moment to listen to their clear, ringing songs, almost always in the rising inflection, as if a question were asked. And for answer, the man who sometimes would "give all the gold he ever saw" for one glimpse of home, draws his sleeve across his eyes.

Some of the sparrows which nest in Alaska use pure white ptarmigan feathers for nest-lining; while their cousins in the east, on the opposite side, breeding in Labrador, use eider-down. In these far northern latitudes these birds scratch in the moss and dead leaves of summer-time, often coming to ice at the depth of three or four inches. The summers are so short that insect life is very scarce, excepting the mosquitoes. But there are berries! And an occasional hunter's or gold-seeker's cabin always furnishes meals at short notice. Men may pass the birds at home in civilization with scarcely a thought; but when away and alone, the presence of a bird they have known in other climes brings them to their senses. It is then they recognize the fact that birds are their comrades and friends, to be cherished and fed, not always hunted and eaten.

On account of the distribution of sparrows the world over, many legends have been written of them. The very earliest we have read is the one that assures us the sparrow was seen by Mother Eve in the Garden of Eden, on the day she ate of the forbidden fruit. In fact, the "tree" was full of sparrows warning the woman not to eat, though the birds themselves were making for the fruit with might and main.

In the story of Joseph it is recorded that the "chief baker" had a dream. In his dream he bore three baskets on his head. In the uppermost basket were all kinds of "bake-meats for the king." While the baker was walking to the palace with the baskets on his head the sparrows came and ate all the meat there was in the upper basket.