The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-02-20
AMERICAN SPARROW BETTER BEHAVED THAN
 ITS ENGLISH COUSIN
Forty Native Species in North America, Although Less Ob- trulsive Than the Imported Variety, Help the Farmer Where the Latter flinders Him.


 Washington, Feb. 19-While one usually thinks of the English species when the word sparrow IS mention ed, there are some 40 species of spar rows in North America which are helpful rather than harmful and 1 should be encouraged rather than discouraged; at least, this is the optn- ion of the United States Department l of Agr1culture's investigator whose Some Com mon Birds Useful To The 1 Farmer has just been issued as Far mers' Bulletin No. 630.
 l While the English sparrow is noisy l and obtrusive. the American species l are unobtrusive both in song and ac- 1 ton. These native sparrows. all | though so seldom noticed by the ma l jority of people, may probably be found in nearly every part Of our l country, altho ough not more than half l a dozen forms are generally known l in any locality.
 l The American varieties resemble I the English sparrow in general, al- I though a few are more brilliant. A | California species has a red head, as have several species in our East I which are not so common. The snow l bird is a sparrow which is particular 1 ly common in winter. It is slate l color with a white breast. While American sparrows are not. | 1 means confine themselves to a, vege- | table diet During the summer, and l especially in the breeding season, they eat many insects and feed their l young largely upon the same food. fl Examination of stomachS of three | species, the song sparrow, chipping l sparrow, and field sparrow, shows that about one-third of the food con- sists of insects, comprising many fn-- l furious beetles. as snout beetles or I-1 Mar f1-E>r l hoppers are eaten. In the case Of the chipping sparrow these insects I form one-eigth of the food. Grass hoppers would seem to be rather T large rnosels, but the bird probably confines itself to the smaller species; l4ndeed, the greatest amount Cover 36 per cent) is eaten in June, when the I larger species are sti1 young and the l smaller most numerous. Besides the l insects already mentioned, many l wasps and bugs are taken. As a. | whole the insect diet of the native sparroWs may be considered benefi- cia1 There are several records of
 potato bug larvae eaten by chipping
 Eparrows.
 l Their vegetable food is limited a1-
 most exclusively to hard seeds. This might seem to indicate that the birds
 feed to some extent upon grain, but
 the stomachs examined show only
 one kind, oats, and but little of that. |
 up of grass and weed seed, which
 form almost the entire diet during
 winter, and the amount consumed is
 immense.
 In the agricultural region of the Isupp erATississippi Valley by roadsides
 abandoned fields wherever they can
 obtain a foothold, masses of rank
 weeds spring up and often form al
 most inpenetra.bIe thickets which af-
 ford food and shelter for irnmens SC
 numbers of birds and enable them to withstand great cold and the most terrible blizzards. A person visiting
 one of these weed patches on a sunny
 morning in January, when the ther-
 mometer is 20 degrees or more below
 zero, will be struck with the life and animation of the bury little inhabi-
 tants- Instead of sitting forlorn and half frozen, they may be seen Hitting 2 from branch to branch, twittering and X fluttering, and showing every ev1- ' dence of enjoyment and perfect com @ fort If one of them is captured il I will be found in excellent condition \ | in fact a veritable ball of fat. The snoWHbird and tree sparrow are Iperhaps the most numerous of all the
 American sparrows- Examination
 of many sto1nachs shows that in win ter the tree sparrow feeds entirely
 upon seeds of weeds. Probably each bird consumes about one-fourth o1 an ounce a, day.
 The writer of the new bulletin has
 estimated the amount of weed seed annually destroyed by these birds in Iowa. On the basis of one-fourth o1 an ounce of seed eaten daily by each bird, and an average of ten birds tC each square mile, remaining in thei1
 winter range 200 days, there would be a, total of 1,75O, 900 pounds or S7S N tons of weed seed consumed in sin S gle season by this one species Large q as are these figures, they unquestion. q ably fall far short of the reality. The estimate of 10 birds to a square M mile is very. conservative, for in Mass
 achusetts, where the food supply il
 less than in the western states, the # tree sparrow is even more abundan r than this in winter. In Iowa, seyera W thousand tree sparrows have been seer l within the space of a. few acres. Thii estimate moreover is for a single
 species, while, as a matter of fact A l there are at least a half 8 dozen bird
 (not all sparrows) that habitua1l, :. feed during winter on these seeds.
 Farther south the tree sparrow il
 replaced in winter by the white 4 throated sparrow, the white-crowneC
 sparrow, the fox sparrow, the son,
 sparrow, the field sparrow, and sev
 era1 others; so that all over the lant
 a vast number. of these seed eater
 are at work during the colder month
 reducing next years crop of wors
 than useless plants.
 M A Trying Time.
 k Colonel asked the beautiful girl