But we have not nearly exhausted the catalogue of the traits belonging to our little friend which give him the advantage over other birds in the struggle for life. His ability to remain with us in winter when most birds are gone stands him in good stead.
It is readily observed by one who pays the least attention to outdoor life that winter finds us with comparatively few birds. North of Maryland and the Ohio River the robin is practically absent in the winter, except in much diminished numbers close to the border. The bluebird is similarly absent; the great flocks of blackbirds are gone; the bobolink is missing entirely; the thrush and the catbird have all left; the flicker and red-headed woodpecker are also spending their winter in the South. The great mass of our bird population has left us until warmer weather shall bring back to us once more our feathered friends. It is true that we are south to the snowbirds or juncos, and their little slate-colored bodies, with their light breasts and their white on each side of the tail, make our bare hedge rows brighter by their presence. A few of our birds like the song sparrow and the cardinal are hidden away in the thicket, and have not all joined their comrades in the south.
The English sparrow was once probably quite as migratory as any of the rest of these, but a great change has come over his habits. With his newly acquired fondness for the haunts of men he has suffered a change in this respect also. Whatever may have been his reason for migrating, it no longer holds. He now finds himself quite able to stand the cold of winter. Accordingly he never leaves us, except very temporarily. When the migrating season comes the sparrows of the neighborhood are very likely to gather themselves together in a single group and take to the neighboring country. I believe this flocking on their part at this time of the year is a remnant of the old migratory habit. Until snow covers the ground the sparrow is not likely to be seen again in such numbers in the city. The advantage the sparrow gains over his competitors by not going south does not appear during winter. When spring comes, however, his gain is evident. He has his choice of all the nesting sites in the region. When the migratory birds return every first-class place is filled by a sparrow's nest. Nothing but second choice situations remain, and with these the late comers must be content. When we consider how much the safety of the next generation depends upon the security of the young while helpless in the nest, we appreciate what the English sparrow has gained by staying throughout the year. Often while the season is so inclement that it would seem there is still danger of frost, the sparrow builds her nest. All sorts of places are open to her choice. She will find a protected corner under a roof, above a spout, in the corner of the porch, behind an open shutter, in the vines against the side of the house, on top of an old robin's nest in the tree, in the bird boxes which have been put up for more desirable creatures; anywhere and everywhere this industrious little mother is liable to build her nest. Her husband will help her more or less in the task, often bringing material and helping to place it in the negligent pile of which their nest is composed. But he does a good deal more fussing and cheering up than he does actual work, and she seems to depend much upon his cheerful presence for her happiness. It is hard to discourage Madam Sparrow when once she has set her mind on home-making. A bird-lover, some time since, reported how a pair of sparrows had started to build a nest upon his lawn. He, wishing to interfere with the process, took a small rifle and shot the male bird. Within twenty minutes the female, who had scouted round the neighborhood, returned with another mate and resumed her nest-building process. Again he interjected the tragic note into her life by shooting her second husband, only to find her start out in pursuit of a third, with whom she returned in the course of an hour. He felt that by this time he had interfered with her domestic happiness as much as he had any right to do, and suffered her to continue her housekeeping with her third husband without further molestation. I imagine it would have puzzled both birds to tell who was the father of the nestlings who appeared two weeks later.
Not only do sparrows nest early, they nest often. I suggested to one of my students that she locate as early in the season as she could the nest of a pair of English sparrows, which was sufficiently accessible, and that she keep it under observation at intervals of a few days throughout the summer. In the fall she came to me with glowing eyes and gave me her report. "It is simply great," she said. "I never went to that nest a single time this summer to find it empty. When I first got there I found four eggs; after a while these hatched out, and the young were on the nest until they were old enough to fly; but before they had left she had slipped a fresh egg among them, ready to start a new batch. Whenever I saw the nest throughout the entire summer, I found in it either eggs, or young, or both." Such reproductive energy as this is hard to beat; compared with this rate of increase, the ordinary bird is the exponent of race suicide. How can a robin hope to compete with this family industry? What can a bluebird offer that will approach such chances of a worthy successor when his work shall be finished?
These, then, are the most important points in which the English sparrow has varied from his sparrow cousins and made of himself the most successful town dweller in the bird world. He has become clannish and gained the advantages of coöperation. He has used man's highways and cars by means of which to expand his area. He has cultivated the presence of man and thus gained protection from his enemies, food from man's waste, and nesting sites on man's house. He has assumed a varied diet. The male has become handsome. He has given up migrating, and thus secured the best nesting sites. He has learned to produce many offspring. With all his versatility, why should he not succeed?
Thrown into competition with our native birds, he easily beats them on their own ground. He survives against the competition of birds which seem to us more estimable in every way. The very fact that he survives proclaims his superiority over them, and shows that our criterion is not the one by which nature judges. We like the birds which serve our purpose. We admire the brilliant plumage of the jay, cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush, and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink, the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can only understand the value of the bird to nature when he is valuable to us. So, because the English sparrow does little that is to our advantage and much that is to our annoyance, he is in our estimation a reprobate and an unending nuisance.
All sensible bird-men must clearly acknowledge that he is a very undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the foregoing account, can scarcely have missed the undercurrent of my affection for the little rascal. He is a thorough optimist; he is absolutely persistent; no hardship seems to dampen his ardor. His heart is valiant above that of most birds so that he has dared to make of man his near neighbor when other birds consider him their worst enemy. I love him for it. When I am in the midst of a big city with its cliffs of offices and its gorges of paved streets, it is to me a cheer and a delight to see this happy little fellow who has adapted himself to circumstances against which no other bird, excepting the pigeon, can cope. I confess that it would be with regret that I should see him disappear from the landscape. I have missed a long line of spring peas through his ravages, and he has objectionably decorated many places about my own home. But I have yet the first violent hand to lay upon the sparrow, and I doubt whether my hand is ever to be reddened with his blood.
I am going to ask bird-men to forgive me if I say that I believe, although I speak only from general impression, and not from careful research, that the sparrow within the past eight years has reached his equilibrium in the neighborhood of Philadelphia and is growing no more abundant. Meanwhile another and very desirable state of affairs is arising. Bird love and bird protection are so active in this neighborhood that there is growing to be a new race of birds who lack the fear of man their ancestors justly had. Under these conditions the wild birds, which for a while we believed to have been completely driven out by the sparrow, are rapidly returning to our villages and towns, and we have many more robins and catbirds, wrens and flickers than we had ten years ago. We have seen the worst of the English sparrow; he has now found his equilibrium.