un to break along near four o'clock, for the cold
gray across the sky was already passing into pearl. The country birds had
been up half an hour, I am sure. However, the old cemetery was wide enough
awake now. There was chirping everywhere. It grew louder and more general
every moment, till shortly the six thousand voices, and more, were raised
in the cheerful din--the matin, if you please, for as yet only a few of
the birds were fighting.

But the fight quickly spread. It is the English sparrow's way of waking
up; his way of whetting his appetite for breakfast; his way of digesting
his dinner; his way of settling his supper--his normal waking way.

To the clatter of voices was added the flutter of wings; for the birds had
begun to shift perches, and to exchange slaps as well as to call
names--the movement setting toward the tree-tops. None of the sparrows had
left the roost. The storm of chatter increased and the buzz of wings
quickened into a steady whir, the noise holding its own with that of the
ice-wagons pounding past. The birds were filling the top-most branches, a
gathering of the clans, evidently, for the day's start. The clock in
Scollay Square station pointed to five minutes to five, and just before
the hour struck, two birds launched out and spun away.

The exodus had commenced. The rest of Boston was not stirring yet. It was
still early; hardly a flush of warmth had washed the pearl. But the
sparrows had many matters to attend to before all the milkmen and bakers
got abroad: they must take their morning dust-bath, for one thing, in the
worn places between the cobble-stones, before the street-sprinkler began
its sloppy rounds.

There was a constant whirl out of the tree-tops now. Occasionally a bird
flew off alone, but most of them left in small flocks, just as I should
see them return in the evening. Doubtless the members of these flocks were
the birds belonging to certain neighborhoods, those that nested and fed
about certain squares, large door-yards, and leafy courts. They may indeed
have been families that were hatched last summer.

The birds that left singly went away, as a rule, over the roofs toward the
denser business sections of the city, while the bands, as I had noticed
them come in at night, took the opposite course, toward Cambridge and
Charlestown. Not more than one in a hundred flew south across the city.

Of course there are sparrows all over Boston. There is no street too
narrow, too n