er to lure a pigeon within reach. But the sparrow, when escaping
your hands, comes to rest but a slight distance away, only to elude
you quite as successfully if you try again. If the sparrow is let
severely alone he becomes more and more familiar with men, flies less
promptly, and goes a shorter distance, but any attempt to trap him
renders him shy more quickly than almost any other bird we have. He
soon learns to avoid a trap in which his companions have come to
grief. Those who would poison or trap sparrows must change constantly
the base of their operations. This fearlessness of man is a valuable
asset to the bird, for it is an important defense against other foes.

The most serious enemy the birds at large have, after man himself, is
the bird of prey. Hawks and owls capture a large quantity of our
smaller birds. Now the hawks and owls are for the most part shy of
man. They have gotten a bad reputation, especially if they are of any
size, because of their more or less pronounced proclivities for
seizing our domestic poultry, and consequently many people will fire
upon a hawk or an owl who would probably fire upon no other bird. By
living close to man the sparrow is largely saved from the danger of
capture by these carnivorous creatures, and this is the first and a
very important element of the advantage to the sparrow of living near
man. But there is the additional advantage that man scatters about
him, in one way or another, a very considerable amount of waste food.
I have suggested that the seeds in the droppings of the horse form a
large proportion of the sparrow's food, and horses are to be found
only with men. In the neighborhood of man's home, unless he has become
sanitary to a degree which has only been attained in recent years,
there is usually more or less garbage, kitchen offal of one sort or
another. To this the sparrow has easy access and from it he makes many
a meal. But this fearlessness of man gives him still another advantage
which his competitors fear to use, it provides him with nesting sites.

Man has the faculty of putting up ornamental trimmings on his house,
and there is no spot the sparrow chooses more willingly in which to
build his nest than the ornamental quirks and cornices of man's
architecture. A Corinthian column with comely leaves in its capital
seems especially designed for the comfort of the sparrow, and his
distinctly untidy nest is the familiar disfigurement of almost every
ornate