Evening star., 1946-09-13
This and That
BIZ Charles E. TrdceUell
BRYANT STREET NE.

Dear Sir:
"One of your correspondents seemed
to hate the English sparrow.
He is all wrong about that little, in
telligent, friendly bird.
In the first place, the sparrow does
not eat peanuts.
He is friendly with all birds; no
sparrow ever drove away any bird, but
he eats and bathes with starlings and
robins.
However, the murderous grackle,
whom this person seems to like, why,
all the birds fly away when the grackle
appears.
Many the poor little sparrow they
have jumped upon and picked to death
Once I saved a sparrow from the
big black grackles when the sparrow
was being held under water by one in
my bird bath. This was when l lived
in Silver Spring.
Il saw 1t just in time, the little SPAR
row was all but gone
The grackle is pretty bird to look
at, so black and shiny and slender of
build, sometimes shining blue and green
in the sun, but he is, to other birds,
even the blue jay, murderous.
The sparrow is the most intelligent
OF birds, not omitting, of course, that
beautiful and saucy fellow, the jay.
He and the squirrels used to cause
me to laugh at their antics. The jay
would fly down for the peanuts
placed for the squirrels, and watch his
chance to grab one, then would take it
away, and 7 have seen them pick up
dead leaf and hide over a peanut,
then fly away.
The poor mallgned starting, too. is
friend of all birds, and he and other
birds used to use the bath together
L have never seen a Startling dive at
another bird when feeding, in fact,
have seen the starting feed the young
OF sparrow, when it appeared to have
no mother.
I have had lots of pleasant hours
watching the antics of the squirrels and
birds, and miss them where now live
Very respectfully K. I. NJ"
One may feel fairly certain that If
the common sparrow were a compare
lively rare bird, it would be accepted
with acclaim by numerous nature lovers
who now profess to despise it.
1t is its large numbers which make
1t unacceptable, but what are we to do
about that, in a world where increas-
ingly large numbers Of things are in
the news?
Bigger and better is the slogan, and
sparrows live up to it, too.
They never heard Of Nautilus, but
they follow his doctrines very we'll
More and more sparrows there must
be to keep up with more and more Rus
slams, more and more Chinese, more
and more Yugoslavs, and so on.
A Spanish revolutionist a literary
man of some note, once wrote a book
called "The Revolt of the Masses" the
thesis of which was that the KEYNOTE
Of modern society was numbers, that the
common people had at last taken over
the places and positions which formerly
belonged to certain persons by birth
and education.
English sparrows do not read but
they enjoy life to the full, and make the
best of things as they come up, some
thing which modern Americans for all
their education and organization, must
somewhow learn to do.
Spsrrows are not such birds as dreams
are made OF, it is true They are
truculent, scrappy, full of fight and
ginger; they are gregarious, they push
others around, and never give up
Some might think that pretty good
description of an American. But unless
we are careful, we are going 10 let the
Russians take our traits away from us.
How would we feel, as Americans, to be
-bluffed-and out-foueht-by some
other racer