(_Passer domesticus_) Finch family
_Called also_: HOUSE SPARROW
_Length_--6.33 inches.
_Male_--Ashy above, with black and chestnut stripes on back
and shoulders. Wings have chestnut and white bar, bordered by
faint black line. Gray crown, bordered from the eye backward
and on the nape by chestnut. Middle of throat and breast
black. Underneath grayish white.
_Female_--Paler; wing-bars indistinct, and without the black
marking on throat and breast.
_Range_--Around the world. Introduced and naturalized in
America, Australia, New Zealand.
_Migrations_--Constant resident.
"Of course, no self-respecting ornithologist will condescend to
enlarge his list by counting in the English sparrow--too pestiferous
to mention," writes Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all bird neighbors
is any one more within the scope of this book than the audacious
little gamin that delights in the companionship of humans even in
their most noisy city thoroughfares?
In a bulletin issued by the Department of Agriculture it is shown that
the progeny of a single pair of these sparrows might amount to
275,716,983,698 in ten years! Inasmuch as many pairs were liberated in
the streets of Brooklyn, New York, in 1851, when the first importation
was made, the day is evidently not far off when these birds, by no
means meek, "shall inherit the earth."
In Australia Scotch thistles, English sparrows, and rabbits, three
most unfortunate importations, have multiplied with equal rapidity
until serious alarm fills the minds of the colonists. But in England a
special committee appointed by the House of Commons to investigate
the character of the alleged pest has yet to learn whether the
sparrow's services as an insect-destroyer do not outweigh the injury
it does to fruit and grain.