El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1901-02-26
Some Plain Facts About
the Responsibility of the
T Sparrow for Driving Out
the SongSterS.

From the New York Sun.
Shreveport. La. Feb. 15.-This re-
pion used to be the winter home OIL
birds but a great change has been
wrought by the English sparrow. II
appeared here first some ten years ago
Five years. afterwards the natives be-
Ahn to notice that its general appear
ance and demeanor had changed
From a cheerful. unobtrusive manner
it had developed a savage looking
bull-head a short. sharp beak. rau-
cous voice and a desire to fly at every
other feathered thing not more than
three times it's size. Its numbers IN
creased rauidly. Where there are
hundreds there are now thousands
1t is. in fact, with rare exceptions,
che only small bird to be seen.
Connecting Shreveport and New
Lewisville Ark. is a little spur OF
the Cotton Belt railroad system. some
seventy miles long. This spur pierces
a region first of plantations cleared
back to the swamps Or river. and then
of small farms. around which grow
pines and other forest trees. The
towns are small and few. From the
wide fields of the cotton plantations
Ilearly all OF the other small birds are
gone. One seees an occasional scis-
sor tail. looking lonely enough or
from a clump of thick grass. or the
bottom of a ditch. half choked with
briars, weeds and cotton stalks. may
come the faint cheep of grass bird
AI'he sparrows are numerous. One re-
suit of their presence is that man
may see in day twenty sparrow hawks
where three years ago he would not
see five.
The sparrow has confined his atten-
ton of course. to understood tree birds.
1t has not bothered the quails. which
live on the ground and take to the air
only for short flight There are not
lacking however, men who assert that
the various forms of snipe, kildeers,
the various forms of snipe, kildees'
sandpipers. and others. excepting the
= lacks have been driven from their US
nal haunts. The sparrow does not at
I tack any fowl it may find blinking in
the DAYTIME. an instructive fear seem
ing to restrain it. though the Owl Is
then nearly helpless; it does not at
tack any form of hawk for the same
reason. 1t attacks the turkey buzzard
whenever that dark sailor gets in its
way, and there is no more singular
sight than one of these huge birds sur
rounded by a crowd of things that
look like insects, swinging rapidly
higher and higher in successive CIR
tclcs attempting no defense, buneted Dy
a hundred blows, pecked to detpe anon
by a hundred bills, until finaiy it
reaches the empyrean and Is at peace.
1t is a matter of common observation
to see sparrows lured by chase or
this kind to a height of a thousand feet
or more which is five times as high as
they ever go under other conditions
The very beautiful and melodious
northern birds which have visited up
per Louisiana. are supposed to nave
gone even farther south to the gulf
country but the sparrows Will seek
them out even there in the course OF
few years, anti where they will go then
. - man can say
None of these tiny flyers which have
made the long journey guided by
wonderful instinct is by nature fight
er, and it is not surprising that the
sparrow has no trouble in killing or
dispossessing them. The various gros-
beaks, including the splendid ind1Vid-
ual the crimson-breasted grosbeak,
Gthe warblers, the green and brown
finches, the vireos, the thrushes. the
orioles are known of these fields and
woods no more. The scarlet tanager |
which lay like a stab of living flame |
against the dark green of the pines, has
been slain or forced to flee. These are |
the tender. timid kinds. But the work |
of which the sparrow in its enormous
numbers is capable of is best exempli- |
fed by the fact that the native birds !
have also been exterminated or con-
quered and made fugitiveS.
There used to be a southern bel1ef
that the king bird. or bee martin, was
able to whip anything that wore feath-
erS and weighed less than a pound 1t
Us probable that a martin is competent
% put to fight any four sparrows that
ever hoped But where there was one
martin there were one hundred spar
rows. and numerical superiority told
numerical superiority joined to a dis
position of inceSSant cOmbat1VeneSS
and anger against everything else. In
the farmyards of this region there
stood a pole some thirty feet high and
on its top dry goods box. with the
top nailed on and holes cut in the
side. 1t was intended as a home for
tne bee martin. 1t took the place OF
the pigeon cote with the people who
had no pigeons and wanted semi-tame
birds about. The box is now the home
for the sparrow, and where the martin
is 10 ornithOlcgist can say.
There never was a gamer lighter,
2sch for inch. than the mocking bird.
that wondrous minstrel whose voice
made glad the moonlit nights. a singer
Of such super'ative excellence that it
admitted no rival, an operate perform
err whose thrills and roulades and bra
vuraS, crescendos and dimuendos and
general colCratura work were the as