Evening star., 1950-01-24
This and That
By Charles f. TraceweH
ARLINGTON. Va.

Dear Sir:
One recent cold morning-the thermom-
eter stood at exactly 25 degrees-I looked
out the window and saw q pretty bird at
my feeding station.
II had to look twice before realized what
I was admiring
Nothing more nor less than q female
English sparrow
Il had not thought before how pretty
these birds can be. The male, with his
black spot, had always appealed to me, but
had not paid much. attention to the
mates.
Now here found myself admiring q
female English sparrow, gaping at her as
II she had been some rare species.
Perhaps she is rarer than we think and
many OF as have been wrong all these years
looking down on her, pretending to despise
her. Haunting the red of the cardinal and
the blue of the bluebird in her nice little face.
What intrigued me most was the sweet
face OF this bird. am not crank about
birds. I can take them or leave them
must confess that am not SO enamored of
them as some of your readers. But this little
thing In the neat gray dress took my fancy
She had a really nice face. You know how
it is. Sometimes one sees girl, somewhere
sure, am not too old for that-and one is
taken by her face. Yes. her face. And it was
that way with this sparrow. She had a nice
face, kind face, and an intelligent look
Had been Tom Sparrow. would have
taken second looki
AS 1t was. I took several looks, and decided
I had wronged sparrows by thinking too
lightly of them. Hereafter I am going to
look less at the titmice and the chickadees,
and more at the sparrows and other plain
birds. They may be plain but it is only be-
ava v1nf nN1r %y~I- Z. =
so to the heads of decorators the rest Of us
have followed suit and decided that things
must have color.
Take look at the next Miss Sparrow.
and you will believe with me that there is mo-
prettier thing in feathers
Very truly, J. D. G."
u
This tribute to good bird is well deserved.
This column for years has been singing
the lady's praise
We got that way when Whitley graced
our yard.
Whitley was lady English sparrow with
more than the usual amount OF white in
her feathers.
While true albino sparrow is not seen
very often, the semi-white ones occur more
frequently, and permit the watcher to 1den-
tify them at will, something he cannot do
with the mass Of them, they look so much
alike.
Whitley was a fine bird, sensible. as our
correspondent says, and with enough differ
ence to set her of.
From watching her we turned to the other
sparrows with interest, and discovered that
we had been missing something.
This is usual procedure with all except
those sad souls who have a Zine" Some
times we are led to believe that these are the
saddest OF all sad souls. You run into them
everywhere. They cannot view many things
honestly because they have their opinions
already fixed. either by themselves or others.
often by others They are unable to be true
to anything, least Of all themselves in their
judgments. This Is called Having lines
and 1t is not just in ones beliefs in politics,
but unfortunately extends to art, music. etc
There is never any use trying to talk to such
persons. They know it ALL before one be-
gins. and of course can know no less when
one ends.
One might think the bird world would be
immune to this sort of thing 1t is not. Ger
tain fixed ideas" permeate it, such as Eng
lish sparrows are no good" and "starlings
should be killed." and crows are terrible, Z
and "bluejays rob the nests of other birds.
1t is good thing, now and then, to take
stock OF all such stock judgments. Look for
yourself. and make up your mind for your
self. Then you may decide, ais our corre-
spondent has. that lady English sparrow is
mighty nice bird, after all.