public building. These are the advantages which come to the
sparrow from his willingness to associate with man, and there are
comparatively few birds with whom he must share them. Few birds select
the immediate neighborhood of man's home for their nests. They may
live in the neighboring trees, they may haunt his orchard, but his
house, for the most part, they decline to frequent.

Still another quality which makes for success in this buccaneer is the
willingness with which he will vary his food as occasion requires. It
is a not infrequent characteristic of the bird family that each
species should have its own rather restricted diet. Birds are quite
particular eaters, and many of them will come well nigh to starvation
before they will use unaccustomed food. The sparrow, on the contrary,
like man, eats almost anything he comes across that could reasonably
be considered edible. He belongs to a group of birds which are
structurally adapted to cracking the hard coats of seeds. This group
of birds known as the finches is provided with the sort of bill
familiar in the ordinary canary bird. It is short, heavy at the base,
comes quickly to a point, and is firm and strong. With it the bird
readily breaks through the hard outer coat of most seeds and feeds
upon the rich cotyledons that are enclosed within. Nowhere in its
entire structure does the plant crowd so much nourishment in so little
space as it does in the seeds. It is not by chance that the great
human food is grain. The sparrow belongs to the one bird group that
makes a specialty of such seeds.

Most of the English sparrow's cousins in this finch group confine
themselves rather rigidly to this diet. Here the variability of the
sparrow again gives him the advantage. He may have the family fondness
for seeds, but in their absence he can be content with almost anything
edible. In the early springtime, when the seeds of last year are gone
and those of the new year have not yet been produced, the sparrow is
not averse to eating young buds from the trees. At this time he is not
unlikely to eat our sprouting lettuce and peas. It is easy to be
severe on him in this matter; but for a creature like man, who has the
same tastes, who eats the enormous buds of the cabbage, the
cauliflower, and the brussels sprouts, or the more tender buds which
he calls heads of lettuce, it seems particularly inappropriate that he
should throw stones at this little creature whose tastes are so
sim