For some reason nests have been exceedingly hard to find. Many birds are always pottering about with no apparent concern for nesting time, and Mr. Bowles hazards that they do not mate until the third year. Apropos of this, one remarks the scarcity of highly plumaged males at all seasons. I have gone six months at a time, where Finches were not uncommon, without seeing a single red bird. In fact, I never found the latter common except in the vicinity of Tacoma.
Nests are placed, preferably, near water, in evergreen or deciduous trees, and at heights varying from six to forty feet. They usually occur on a bough at some distance from the trunk of a supporting tree, seldom or never being found in a crotch. Composed externally of fir twigs, they are lined copiously with green moss, horse-hair, and string, and contain four or five handsome blue-green eggs, spotted and dashed with violet and black.
Two broods are probably brought off in a season, the first about the 20th of May and the second a month later. A sitting female outdoes a Siskin in her devotion to duty, and not infrequently requires to be lifted from her eggs. The male trusts everything to his wife upon these occasions, but is on hand to do his share of the work when it comes to feeding the babies.
No. 35.
ENGLISH SPARROW.
Introduced. Passer domesticus (Linn.).
Synonyms.—House Sparrow. Domestic Sparrow. Hoodlum.
Description.—Adult male: Above ashy gray; middle of back and scapulars heavily streaked with black and bay; tail dusky; a chestnut patch behind eye spreading on shoulders; lesser wing-coverts chestnut; middle coverts bordered with white, forming a conspicuous white bar during flight; remainder of wing dusky with bay edging; below ashy gray or dirty white; a black throat-patch continuous with lores and fore-breast; bill and feet horn color. Adult female: Brownish rather than gray above; bay edging lighter; no chestnut, unmarked below. Length 5.50-6.25 (139.7-158.8); wing 3.00 (76.2); tail 2.20 (55.9); bill .50 (12.7). Sexes of about equal size.
Recognition Marks.—“Sparrow size,” black throat and breast of male; female obscure brownish and gray.
Nesting.—Nest: a globular mass of grass, weeds and trash, heavily lined with feathers, placed in tree and with entrance in side; or else heavily lined cavity anywhere. Holes in trees and electric lamps are alike favored. Eggs: 4-7, whitish, heavily dotted and speckled with olive-brown or dull black. The markings often gather about the larger end; sometimes they entirely obscure the ground color. Av. size, .86 × .62 (21.8 × 15.8). Season: March-September; several broods.
General Range.—“Nearly the whole of Europe, but replaced in Italy by P. italiæ, extending eastward to Persia and Central Asia, India, and Ceylon” (Sharpe). “Introduced and naturalized in America, Australia, New Zealand, etc.” (Chapman).
Range in Washington.—As yet chiefly confined to larger cities and railroad towns, but spreading locally in farming sections.
Authorities.—Rathbun, Auk, Vol. XIX. Apr. 1902, p. 140. Ra. Kk. B. E.
Specimens.—B. C.
What a piece of mischief is the Sparrow! how depraved in instinct! in presence how unwelcome! in habit how unclean! in voice how repulsive! in combat how moblike and despicable! in courtship how wanton and contemptible! in increase how limitless and menacing! the pest of the farmer! the plague of the city! the bane of the bird-world! the despair of the philanthropist! the thrifty and insolent beneficiary of misguided sentiment! the lawless and defiant object of impotent hostility too late aroused! Out upon thee, thou shapeless, senseless, heartless, misbegotten tyrant! thou tedious and infinite alien! thou myriad cuckoo, who dost by thy consuming presence bereave us daily of a million dearer children! Out upon thee, and woe the day!
Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English Sparrow. The extinction of the Great Auk, the passing of the Wild Pigeon and the Turkey,—sad as these are, they are trifles compared to the wholesale reduction of our smaller birds, which is due to the invasion of this wretched foreigner. To be sure he was invited to come, but the offense is all the more rank because it was partly human. His introduction was effected in part by people who ought to have known better, and would, doubtless, if the science of ornithology had reached its present status as long ago as the early Fifties. The maintenance and prodigious increase of the pest is still due in a measure to the imbecile sentimentality of people who build bird-houses and throw out crumbs for “the dear little birdies,” and then care nothing whether honest birds or scalawags get them. Such people belong to the same class as those who drop kittens on their neighbors’ door-steps because they wouldn’t have the heart to kill them themselves, you know.
The increase of this bird in the United States is, to a lover of birds, simply frightful. Their fecundity is amazing and their adaptability apparently limitless. Mr. Barrows, in a special report prepared under the direction of the Government, estimates that the increase of a single pair, if unhindered, would amount in ten years to 275,716,983,698 birds.
As to its range, we note that the subjugation of the East has long been accomplished, and that the conquest of the West is succeeding rapidly. It is not possible to tell precisely when the first Sparrows arrived in Washington, but it is probable that they appeared in Spokane about 1895. Of its occurrence in Seattle, Mr. Rathbun says: “Prior to the spring of 1897 I had never seen this species in Seattle, but in June of that year I noted a pair. The following season I saw fourteen; in 1899 this number had increased to about seventy, associating in small flocks.”
The favorite means of dissemination has been the box car, and especially the grain car. The Sparrows, being essentially grain and seed eaters, frequent the grain cars as they stand in the railroad yards, and are occasionally imprisoned in them, hopeful stowaways and “gentlemen of fortune.” On this account, also, the larger cities and railroad towns are first colonized, and at this time of writing (Jan., 1908) the birds are practically confined to them, Tacoma having an especial notoriety in this respect because of its immense grain-shipping interests.