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Updated: June 26, 2025
The house-sparrow, the most domestic of wild birds, gives a look-out for squalls between every peck, but it will soon learn to distinguish the person who does not molest and who feeds it, even to coming at his call, while fish, those most cold-blooded of creatures, which in an ordinary way go off like a silver flash at the sight of a shadow, will grow so familiar that they will rise to the surface and touch the white finger-tips placed level with the water.
This bird was hunted from every spot he chose to alight on; no sooner did he enter the garden than one of the stronger birds flew at him 'so misery is trodden on by many. There was a drone-fly on a sunny wall on January 20, the commonest of flies in summer, quite a wonder then; the same day a house-sparrow was trying to sing, for they have a song as well as a chirp; on January 22 a tit was sharpening his saw and the gnats were jumping up and down in crowds this up-and-down motion seems peculiar to them and may-flies.
The house-sparrow is as much at home in Norway as he is in every other land, but in winter he sticks close to the habitations, and were it not for the fact that the people are bird-lovers, sparrows would have a poor chance of picking up a living at this time of the year.
Unfortunately some one was injudicious enough to import the English house-sparrow: these detestable little birds, whose instincts are purely mischievous and destructive, like all useless things, have increased at an enormous rate, and are gradually driving the beautiful native birds away. All these birds were wonderfully tame till the hateful sparrows began molesting them.
This is the only sparrow found at Darjeeling. It has the habits of the house-sparrow. The sexes are alike in appearance. The head is chestnut and the cheeks are white. There is a black patch under the eye, and the chin and throat are black. The remainder of the plumage is very like that of the house-sparrow. Hirundo rustica. The common swallow. Hirundo nepalensis. Hodgson's striated swallow.
She was so utterly different to all women as he had known them as different as a bird of paradise to a common house-sparrow. Meanwhile, as these thoughts flitted through his brain, she moved gently from his embrace and smiled proudly, yet sweetly. "Worthy of me?" she said softly and wonderingly. "It is I that will pray to be made worthy of you! You must not put it wrongly, Philip!"
A restless little House-sparrow would seem an unlikely bird to become tame, but I have heard of one which was rescued, having fallen from his nest, and lived for two years on the happiest terms with his master, who says of his pet bird; "He was only confined to his cage during the morning: from midday until the next morning he was free to go about the house, but was of course mostly kept to one room.
But there is nothing anomalous in the musical faculties lying dormant in man: some species of birds which never naturally sing, can without much difficulty be taught to do so; thus a house-sparrow has learnt the song of a linnet.
Besides the animals already named, the colonists have introduced ferrets and weasels, to reduce the destructive excess of the imported rabbits; and they, whilst failing to subdue the rabbits, have themselves become a serious nuisance. Of small birds there were introduced the house-sparrow, which is too prolific, and is hated by the farmers; the greenfinch, a pest; the bullfinch, a failure.
The ward oppressed her, and the gloomy autumn clouds that hung over the wilderness of warehouses upon which her eye rested day by day canopied her with despair. She listened for the wind but all she heard was its monotonous hum along the telegraph wires that stretched overhead. She looked for the birds but all she saw was the sooty-winged house-sparrow that perched upon the eaves.
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