The times., 1898-10-09
THE SONG BIRDS.
Driven Away By Spnrrows Which
Are Fought BY Crows.

From the Baltimore SUM-
The sweet-singing, bright-plumaged
| birds of Maryland, that few years ago
lined every roadside built nests in near
| ly every bush and sang in every field,
meadow and forest, have almost wholly
vanished. A few more years, and the
! feathered tribe that was wont to trill
| through the State like a gigantic music
/ box, viii probably be eXterminated. The
! sparrows and crows viii alone be left.
Prof. Philip r. Uhler provost of the
! Peabody Institute, who is an authority
| on ornithology, speaks feelinsly of the
| outgoing of the birds, the struggles they
made to stay. and their final rout.
There used to be a time when walking
| or driving mile or so beyond the city
was made delightful because of the melo-
dy awakened by the bluebird. the robin.
the meadow lark the wren, the little
yellow finch the little brown creeper. the
sandy mocking bird, the three kinds Of
redbirds, the jaybirds. the thrushes and
| orioles There IS no music in the mead
| ows now. These birds have gone. They
/ have been driven from the State, and
/ their species here about eXterminated.
There have been two great causes for
| this driving out of one of the greatest
| attractions of the country. One has been
/ the promiscuous hunting and killing Of
/ birds by gunners and by boys with cat
! rifles. The other and greatest cause is
| these miserable, rascally sparrows. Years
| ago the city council of Baltimore fool
| ishly followed the example of Philadel-
| phia and allowed a lot of sparrows to be
| imported into the city and placed in the
| public parks with the idea of protecting
| the trees from worms. These sparrows
may have killed the worms, but they have
| also deprived the State of song birds. A
| sparrow is most malciously destruct-
! i've little creature. He will destroy any
| thing pecking at the eggs of other birds
wherever ne finds them, breaking up the
nets and routing out the birds. Since
| they were brought here they have multi
piled at an alarming rate. We have no
bird in the State that multiplies anything
| like as fast Their numbers have In
creased far up into the millions. They
have spread over the State everywhere
| except in the mountains. Wherever they
| have gone they clear out the other birds.
"a bird lays eggs, as a rule, once a
| year, and then never over five eggs. If
| these are destroyed by sparrows, as they
| will be if there are any near, the bird
will possibly lay two more eggs, and if
these are also pecked at and destroyed,
! the bird leaves. 1t is forced from place to
! place, everywhere finding these sparrows,
and always finding it impossible to hatch
| fits young. Thus our fine, beautiful birds
are either driven out of the State. where
| there are no sparrows, or die here, with
out leaving young. The law protects spar
rows in the city. and it is awuflly hard
to make any headway against them in
! the country, where city laws are not rec
| ognized. There is no natural method of
| checking their increase, and their sway is
| absolute over the State Driving out the
roads now one sees nothing but sparrows
| and hears no sound but their peevish
cries.
| There are still a few orioles about.
that have come into the houses for pro-
| lection, but other birds are neither seen
nor heard. For ten years I have not seen
| a jaybird in the vicinity of Baltimore.
! The poor catbird, with its peculiar cry,
! and it's nest In every alder bush, has been
| pecked and broken and it's home Destroy
] ed. Up in the mountains the sparrows
have not yet penetrated, and in a few
| places where cunning is not allowed there
are fine collections of birds In the Green
| Spring Valley a few patches of forest, yet
untouched by the AK, form a harbor and
shelter for the birds.
zone way, and a very peculiar way of
putting a check on the sparrows. has
! been brought TO my attention. Three
| years ago the Peabody Institute was sim
1
| nests in the hollows of the balustrades on
| the roof, in the rainpipe cutters on the
| extensions, and fiuttered and flew all
| over the place. They were laying hun
| dreds of eggs up on the roof and about,
and had gotten so bold as to fly down
| the ventilators right into the library.
! They were almost as thick on the top and
steeple of Mount Vernon Place Methodist
! Episcopal Church across the street. Be-
sides this, our roof was already tenanted
| by about 500 or more pigeons kept by the
! janitor of the institute and his son. who
| set their traps up there and fed them
| One day l noticed a crow ON the roof of
our building. 1 saw him look about curl
! ously, up, around and down where the
| sparrows' nests were. The next thing he
| did was to get to work on the eggs. A
| few days passed, and / saw him again,
i this time accompanied by two other crows
| that were at the same scheme. The crows
| from that time on increased until twelve
came to that spot
Meanwhile there was trouble among
| the sparrows and pigeons. Their eggs
We're being eaten at an alarming rate,
and they were obliged to go. And go they
did, so that now there is not a sparrow to
| be found on our roof or about the insti-
tute where before there We're hundreds
On the Mount Vernon Place Church they
| have vanished in the same way and the
pigeons likewise have disappeared. These
crows have been coming regularly every
morning to this place-one dozen of them
| They appear to have beat. and work
! between the Peabody Institute and Dol
| phin Street on the north. In that space
| they have cleaned out many sparrows
| The pigeons were as numerous as they
were about st. Paul's In London, where
people make a practice of feeding them
| They have gone, too.
''The fact of these twelve crows work
! ing in this way is very singular, and goes
| to prove that the crow has more brains
than he is given credit for. The big crow
| roost In Anne Arundel county. back OF
! Spring Gardens is the gathering spot for
/ thousands of them, where they scrape
| for the water snails. Every morning be-
tween and o'clock a big flock of them
passes over the city AS they reach the