With two such broods in a season the chestnut feathers on
the father's jaunty head might well turn gray.
Unlike most of the sparrows, the little chippy frequents high trees, where its
nest is built quite as often as in the low bushes of the garden. The
horse-hair, which always lines the grass" up that holds its greenish-blue,
speckled eggs, is alone responsible for the name hair-bird, and not the
chippy's hair-like trill, as some suppose.
ENGLISH SPARROW (Passer domesticus) Finch family
Called also: HOUSE SPARROW [AOU 1998]
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
companion ship 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.
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