Sparrows are not invariably wise in the selection of their building sites. Instance: Two sparrows built this summer in the rose-covered spout of my verandah. A terrible storm of rain came, and the young were drowned in the torrent of water that came from the roof. But I daresay these silly birds think such a thing will not occur again—in their time. At all events, they have thrown the dead birds out to the cat, renovated and re-lined the nest, and there are eggs in it now. I was staying last summer for a week or two with a friend not far from here. There were plenty of martens about, and three nests under the eaves right over my bedroom window. For several mornings I had noticed grains of wheat on my window-ledge, and on looking up towards the nest I noticed feathers protruding. Now, had I been Samuel Pickwick, I should have at once taken out my note-book and made the following entry:—“N.B. The house-martens in Hampshire line their nests with feathers and feed their young on wheat and barley.”
I laughingly told honest Joseph G—, my friend’s gardener, of my discovery in natural history. He was too old a sparrow to be caught with chaff, however.
“It’s the sparrows, beggar ’em,” he said, shutting his fist; “they’re at their games agin. I’ll shoot ’em, I will. They waits till the swallers builds their nests, then they goes and turns ’em out and finishes up wi’ feathers.”
“Don’t shoot them,” I said, “they have young.”
“Indeed, sir, but I will,” cried Joseph G—. “What right has they to turn the swallers out, eh? Fair play, I says, fair play and no favour.”
Some years ago I read that the sparrows in Australia had constituted themselves a kind of plague, and in rather a strange way they stole all the hay to build their nests, and every plan, such as smoking them, and turning the garden hose on the nests, etc, had been tried in vain. We must not believe all colonists tell us. They are noted perverters of the truth. Why didn’t they retaliate and turn the sparrows into pies—a sparrow pie, they say, is a dainty dish. I do not care to eat my sparrows. I believe that killing sparrows is like killing house-flies—others come to fill up the death vacancies.
Now there are some things about sparrows that I confess I cannot quite understand. Knowing that they are often bigamists, sometimes polygamists, I am never surprised to see two or three hens helping a cock to build the family nest; but when I notice, as I have frequently done, a sparrow who has only one wife being assisted in the construction of his domicile by another gentleman sparrow, what am I to think? Who, I want to know, is the other fellow who drops round of a forenoon in a friendly kind of way with a weed in his mouth, and even gets inside and “chins” the nest. Is he a brother-in-law, or a father-in-law, or the son by a former marriage, or what? I give it up, but there is the fact, and “Facts are chiels that winna ding.”
It may not be generally known that there are bachelor sparrows, who remain bachelors all the summer from choice, and old-maid sparrows who are obliged to be so, and who sometimes build nests and sit by them looking disconsolate enough, sighing and singing “po-eete” for the poet who never comes.
Here is an anecdote with a little mystery about it that the reader may possibly be able to unravel, for I can’t. It is a little tragedy in one act, and must have been a very painful one to the principals. My splendid Newfoundland, Hurricane Bob, came down to my garden wigwam one forenoon last spring. He was whining and apparently in great distress of mind.
“Come on up here with me, master,” he said, “there are some strange goings on at the front lawn.”