Gen. Char. Bill robust, swollen, without any distinct ridge; upper and under outlines curved; margins inflexed; palate vaulted, without any knob; nostrils covered by sparse, short, incumbent feathers; side of bill with stiff, appressed bristles. Tarsi short and stout, about equal to or shorter than the middle toes; claws short, stout, and considerably curved. Wings longer than tail; somewhat pointed. Tail nearly even, emarginated, and slightly rounded.
Pyrgita domestica, Cuv.
THE HOUSE SPARROW.
Fringilla domestica, Linn. Syst. Nat. 12th ed. 323, 1766. Pyrgita domestica, Cuv. Reg. An. 2d ed. (1829), I, 439. Passer domesticus, Degland & Gerbe, Ornith. Europ. I, 1867, 241.
Pyrgita domestica.
18788
Sp. Char. Male. Above chestnut-brown; the interscapular feathers streaked by black on inner webs; the top of head and nape, lower back, rump, and tail-coverts plain ashy; narrow frontal line, lores, chin, throat, and jugulum black; rest of under parts grayish, nearly white along median region. A broad chestnut-brown stripe from behind eye, running into the chestnut of back; cheeks and sides of neck white; outside of closed wing, pale chestnut-brown, with a broad white band on the middle coverts, and behind showing the brown quills; the lesser coverts dark chestnut like the head stripe. Tail dark brown, edged with pale chestnut. Bill black; feet reddish. Iris brown.
Female. Duller of color, and lacking the black of face and throat; breast and abdomen reddish-ash; cheeks ashy; a yellow-ochre band above and behind the eyes, and across the wings. Head and neck above brownish-ash; body above reddish-ash, streaked longitudinally with black.
Male in winter. The colors generally less distinct. Length, 6.00; wing, 2.85; tail, 2.50; tarsus, .70; middle toe and claw, .60.
The House Sparrow of Europe has been introduced into so many parts of the United States as to render it probable that at no distant day it will have become one of our most familiar species. Brought over to the New World within a comparatively few years, it has commenced to multiply about the larger cities, especially in the environs of New York, as also about Portland, Boston, Newark, and Philadelphia. The first effort made to naturalize it about Washington failed in consequence of the death of three hundred individuals imported by the Smithsonian Institution. A second,