THE LONDON SPARROW.
GREAT numbers of the London sparrows are now deserting the streets and houses for the ever-in- creasing area of public gardens, parks, and squares. There they nest by preference in trees, using any materials which come to hand. The nests are usually built in a hurry, and freshly mown grass the nearest, and therefore the most common framework of the sparrow nursery. In the main thoroughfares their nests are scarcely more numerous than those of other birds in a Surrey lane, though as the vociferous birds are never quiet the position of each nest is easily noted. In his old haunts among the bricks and mortar the Loudon sparrow is far more particular in the choice of a site for his nest than might be thought. Con- scious of the ever-present danger from cats, he seeks a hollow in a perpendicular wall-face. It does not matter whether this is among the limbs of a statue in a niche, or the pedi- ment of a Palladian window, but any proximity to the line of roof, cat-haunted, and therefore dangerous, is avoided. Unlike the rats, the London sparrows do not desert a falling house. Those which are advertised for sale and demolition, and are consequently covered with large frames for bill-posting, are in great request with them. The spaces between the bill- frames and the walls to which they are bolted are safe and commodious nesting-grounds, and the iron spikes, pegs of wood, and ledges of the frames make capital perches. Some houses adjoining those demolished to make a way to the Hotel Cecil, and decorated with advertisements, are blessed with a few sparrow families living between the advertisement- boards and the wall, and getting the greater part of their living from the oats dropped from the nosebags of the horses on the cabstand near the hotel. Others have nested behind the carving over the windows in Attenborough's shop. But in the case of rows of houses they seem to avoid the gutters, which are their pet nesting-place on detached residences. The probable reason is that in terraces cats traverse the whole of the roof and gutter-line, and can claw out any broods within reach of their nightly prowl One example of the " progressive" character of the London sparrrow is his acceptance and delight in that most hideous of all modern building material, corrugated iron roofing. If a shed or out- building of sufficient height roofed with this is erected near their old quarters the sparrows will desert them to a bird, and nest under the crumpled passages of the iron. The " eaves " of this kind of roof are never filled in, and i pre- sents hundreds of ready-made tunnels leading under the cross- beams. No cat can climb under it, or stretch a claw far enough up to hook out the nest. The whole community will sit on it and chirp its praises the first hot morning after it has been put up. It has " come as a boon and a blessing " to London sparrows, and if the question were put to the vote whether they would rather dispense with corrugated iron or with trees, the iron might possibly carry the day.
It is in keeping with the democratic, commonplace, ordinary, unreflective mind of the London sparrow that he is intensely local. In London itself he moves as seldom as he can from his own particular block of houses or square or terrace; and in the suburbs he keeps not only to his own house, but often to the back or front of the house only, not caring to circumnavigate his own suburban garden. In spring, when pulling crocus flowers to pieces becomes a mania with sparrows for a few days, it has been noticed that in many instances all the sparrows in the front of the house will take a fit of crocus- spoiling, while the flowers behind the house are let alone. Or the reverse may be the case, all those behind the house being spoilt, while the sparrows haunting the front of the house and front-garden are occupied in some other sphere of activity. If an old nesting-place is destroyed the local birds at once seek another as close as possible to it. Recently some offices were pulled down at a large shipbuilding yard in London. At the same time a ship was being built under a long shed close by. The evicted sparrows at once began to build in the roof of the shed, making a row of nests within a few feet of the deck of the new vessel, on which workmen were passing to and fro from 6 o'clock till sunset, and a continuous din of hammering rivets went on all day. The nests were all fixed between the double longitudinal beams which supported the iron roof, and as the only rest for the bottom of the nest was on the sloping struts which left the main pillars to join the beam, the birds filled in the whole of the acute angle with grass, and raised the nest on this. The old-fashioned nesting- place of the London sparrow was ivy on high houses, prefer- ably that which was seldom cat. From five to twenty nests were often found in old-fashioned terraces in the ivy of a single house, and though the crocuses suffered, the sparrows. were invaluable aids to the London gardener in days when roses and pot-flowers, and even peas and lettuces, were com- monly grown in the narrow strips of ground behind the ter- races of Bayswater or Brompton. Even their flower-pulling often has more method than might be supposed. Of two- cherry-trees in a certain garden one is always attacked by sparrows when in blossom, and the bloom scattered. The other is not touched. This is a sound tree, and bears a good crop. The other tree is in bad condition, and affected with blight. and canker, and it is quite probable that the sparrows are only destroying diseased blossoms. In the New Forest this spring- the bullfinches visited two adjacent gardens. In one they apparently picked off every bud from the gooseberry-trees. In. the other they were shot, and the bads saved. In this garden there are almost no gooseberries. In the other, where the buds were apparently destroyed, there is an abundant crop. For- " bullfinch " read " sparrow," and the lesson may be the same..
If left to himself the London sparrow would probably multi- ply exceedingly, for there is enough waste from every human household to keep at least one pair of sparrows. That would, give something like one and a half million sparrows to the area of greater London. Bat these figures do not represent actual facts. The sparrow population is rigorously kept down, not by want of fecundity, for at the Zoo, for instance, where food and shelter abound, the birds seem to breed at all seasons of the year, but by the operations of the natural enemy, that- great fact in all wild life, which even the progressive London sparrow cannot avoid. The natural enemy in this case is the London cat. If any one will count up the number of houses in his or her knowledge which do not possess a cat, the- numbers and ubiquity of the natural enemy will become• apparent. Poor people keep more cats than rich people, so. the small houses abound in cats. Rich people's cats, which have large houses as a rule, only catch the sparrows on their own estate; but poor cats have to poach at large, and their ravages among the young sparrows are prodigious. It has. been observed that a sparrow-killing cat bags, on the- average, two young birds a day. No amount of correction seems to prevent their indulgence in this form of sport.. They know it is wrong, but it is too fascinating. One young cat of the writer's acquaintance went into a fit after a mild beating for killing young sparrows, and as soon as. he recovered went off to catch another. A cat in the same house which was surprised with two naked nestlings in its. mouth slipped them underneath a mat on the stairs when it saw its mistress approaching. Nature is too strong for them, and the drawing-room pussy seems no more able to. resist the taste for sport than the stable cat.
Usually it is only the young broods which are killed by the= cats; but on cold, wet days old birds are sometimes caught. Against all other enemies but the cat the London sparrows hold their own, though a fox-terrier occasionally catches an unwary bird. Their faculty of self-preservation is only com- parable to that of the London street•arab. The London wood-pigeons, which are only beginners in urban life, are- occasionally run over or trodden on by horses in the Row- No one ever heard of a sparrow thus meeting his end. They know to an inch the limit of safety, whether feeding on a railway line, among the street traffic, or in the gardens of a. London square. Intensely self-regarding and self-satisfied, they are also intensely democratic. Seclusion, repose, privacy, reserve, all these are odious to the London sparrow. He does not appreciate them himself, and, like the human plebeian,. resents any departure from his standard in others. No more retiring bird has a chance among the sparrows. They bully and hustle even the blackbirds, and if a canary gets loose among them he is at once mobbed, presumably because his• feathers are brighter than the sparrow's. They talk or eat. from dawn till dusk, quarrel loudly and in public, live any- how and anywhere, but always in comfort, have no standard of elegance, like the birds whose nests are always beautiful, but somehow they get on where other birds do not, and achieve success, but of a coarse material kind which even a naturalist finds it difficult to admire. They are, in fact, just like other Londoners.
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