Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1878-04-24

We printed some weeks since the card
of the society in Cambridge, (Nutall we
believe), against the English sparrow.
We give this week the other side by Prof.
Hagen of Harvard. We are great
friend of the birds, and as the English
sparrows are rapidly spreading in the state,
it is important that the question be settled
if possible whether they be friends or
foes:
Prominence has been always given to
the pretended fact that the sparrows drive
off or crowd out indigenous birds. Ac-
cording to my personal observation in
Cambridge and other suburbs of Boston,
this is not true. When | came here in
1867 | was rather startled by the scarcity
of birds in such large number of beauti-
full gardens and splendid grounds. The
following spring l was able to understand
why birds here were so rare, as saw and
heard, morning and afternoon around and
very near to the Museum and elsewhere,
the shooting of every kind of bird; as l
saw boys plundering the nests of the most
valuable insect eaters, robins not excepted;
as | saw target-shooting in the open
meadow, between Broadway and Cam
bridge street, the target fastened to large
trees with birds nests in them. During
the last years the protection of sparrows
has surely saved the native birds, and |
have never seen in Cambridge more ma
tive birds and never heard more beautiful
singing birds than in the summer of
1877.
Concerning the diminished number of
native birds in the Smithsonian grounds in
Washington, recorded in the report of the
club, am assured that one of the fore
most American ornithologists denies fiat
gotten that, by the rapid increase of the
cities Cambridge has nearly twice as
many inhabitants now as in 1869, and the
incessant disappearance of trees and
shrubs, some kinds of birds may prefer to
90 to more solitary places.
The argument of the report that spar
rows drive other birds out of bird-boxes
is rather funny one, when it is remem-
bered that nearly all these boxes were
placed for the sparrows only. think that
every bird will fight for its home. Never
theess, l observed in 1877 sparrows driven
out of their box. which they had used the
year before by swallows who raised their
young safely among dozen of boxes
near by that were used by sparrows. In
a bird box in garden at the corner of
Broadway and Harvard street, a couple of
sparrow and a couple of swallows settled
last year together. The box had ONLY one
entrapace, through which all four birds had
to pass, and as there were two glass WIN
dows in the box both nests could be OBJ
served, and the young of both were safely
raised. If, as it now seems TO be, native
birds prefer to breed in bird-boxes, as they
did not in former years,it would be simply
reasonable TO place more boxes every
where, rs is done in Europe, different ones
for different kinds of birds.
No one has ever commended that the
sparrow is beauty, or charming singer
indeed, he is only an interchangeable business
man, minding first his own matters, as is
not uncommon among business men. But
he is admirably adapted for his business,
to destroy insects. He is very enduring,
staying through the winter, when few 9TH
er insect-eating birds are here. He begins
to breed much earlier, and breeds much
oftener than other birds, and is therefore
much better able to give an energetic
help to the destruction of insects and
weeds.
AS no naturalist will pretend that bird,
by importation into foreign but similar
climate, can entirely change its character
in few years. the sparrow question will
probably 60 through the same, perhaps
somewhat abridged, stages of opinion as
| - I la,.t h,c ,nl
able addition to the indigenous fauna, and
most certainly n benefit TO horticulturists
and farmers. DIR. H. A. HAGEN,
Professor in Harvard University.
March q, 1878.