Sparrows may keep the same mates from year to year, and so they may arrange for pairing as early as November or December the year before, flying about with their coming queens, and roosting near them at night. But considering the number of these birds that are killed every year—by our bold sparrow-club men for example, by misguided gardeners, and by bucolic louts who net them in the ivy after nightfall for the purpose of supplying matches with the needed birds—considering the quantities of them that cats and hawks kill, and the numbers that die from frost and starvation, to say nothing of the young birds of last season, the mating time is a very busy one indeed. The cocks are then as full of fight as an Irishman on a fair day, and the hens—well they simply sit and look on.
“None but the brave deserve the fair,” they seem to say to themselves, “and it is certainly very gratifying to one’s self-esteem and respect to know that all these sanguinary battles now raging round the rose-trees and in under the laurel-bushes are about us.”
Here are a few notes I took some months ago:—A bright spring morning in March. Sunshine on the red brick walls of our cottage, sunshine on the wistaria. Wistaria not in blossom yet.—N.B. Blossom comes before leaves, though it is now covered with long soft downy buds, tipped with a suspicion of mauve. The forenoon is quite warm, delightful to be out of doors. Yet at seven o’clock there was hoar-frost on the ground, and thin ice on the dogs’ water. The sparrows are unusually lively, and bickering constantly—especially the cocks. Yonder a fight has commenced, just under the eave; it rages there a few moments, then down tumble the belligerents from a height of twenty feet, holding viciously on to each other’s jaws all the while with the ferocity of bulldogs. Now they struggle together on the lawn, lunging and pecking, and wrestling with wings outspread and legs everywhere. There are beads of blood about their eyes, and tiny drops on the grass. What a serious matter it seems! Death or victory! they think and care for nothing else. I believe I could steal up and put my hat over the pair of them. “England’s difficulty,” says my Persian cat, creeping up, “is Ireland’s opportunity.” No you won’t, puss. Go away at once, or I’ll call for Collie to you.
But see, one sparrow has triumphed. Vae Victis! He chases the conquered and breathless bird from bush to bush, till his own lungs give out, and he returns open-mouthed but glorious, and flies up to the tree where sits the cosy wee hen that all the row has been about. He is going to say something or make a proposal of some kind, when back flies the conquered cock, and the battle is renewed with double vigour. This is a longer fight than last, but victory once more declares itself on the side of the former champion, and back he flies again to the trysting twig—to find what? Why, another fellow who has been actually taking a mean advantage of his absence in the battle-field, and pruning his feathers in front of his hen. There is another fight there and then, and perhaps there may be many more to come. But in the end all things will be well, and the fittest survive.
Round the corner are a pair of birds already matched and mated; they are at peace with all the world, and can afford to sit quietly on their twigs and witness the fighting and the fun.
The cocks this lovely morning seem striving to do all they can to make themselves conspicuous. The hens, on the other hand, sit quietly on their twigs, their morsels of tails at an angle of about 45 degrees, their little beaks in the air, and their feathers all balled out to catch the sunshine.
To one of these independent little mites a black bib sidles up. He addresses her in wretchedly bad grammar, but what can you expect of a sparrow?
“It’s you and me this season, ain’t it?” he says.
She tosses her bill higher in air than it was before, as she replies—
“Oh dear no, sir. I couldn’t think of changing my state.”