221) M'ARKOW.
Throughout Ireland, Scotland, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands
it is to be found as in England. In the outer Hebrides it is said to
have been known only at Bulbar, in the island of Barra, where it had
made its abode in a ruined church, thus fulfilling literally the words
of the Psalmist, 'Yea, the Sparrow hath found her a house, and the
Swallow a nest where she may lay her young; even Thy altars O
Lord of Hosts, my King and my God.* It now appears to be multiplying
in that district.
Following the methodical arrangement prescribed to myself in the
introduction to the present 'History of British Birds,' at this stage of
the narrative of the Sparrow, 1 have arrived at that portion of my,
alas! too brief, allotted space, which is assigned to the subject of
migration. But on ihis head little could be said: where is the
Sparrow to migrate to or from, for where is he not to be found!
Wherever this bird is met with his character is, as I have said,
much the same—bold, pert, and familiar; 'instead of the gentle and
pleasing confidence displayed towards the human race by the Redbreast,
the Nightingale, the Redstart, and some other sniaU birds, the Sparrow
shews a bold disregard that, is far from engaging affection; as if our
kindness and our enmity were alike despised. Instances are not wanting
however, of great attachment on the part of caged Sparrows for
persons by whom they have been reared.'
In London, where, as in most large towns, Sparrows abound, one
has been known to perch on and under the moveable 'café' of one of
those examples of 'London labour and the London poor,'who deserve
far more commiseration than 1 fear even Mr. Mayhew's very able work
will earn for them—from sonic at least—and there pick up its crumbs;
nay, not only was it wont thus daily and hourly to do, but it was
even accustomed to go the length of a whole street to meet him and
it on the way from his home—from his nightly home to his daily one—
whenever and as often as he was detained, perhaps by the severity of
a winter's morning. It would then ride back in the 'café,' wheeled
along by him, to receive the reliques of the early meal which some
industrious man would snatch on his way to his work—to 'gather up
the crumbs,' though not from a 'rich man's table' This Sparrow used
to feed out of the hand of the said honest Patrick Corbctt, to sit on
his knee, and drink out of his cup; 'she was unto him as a daughter.'
I say she, for it was a hen bird; and for four successive years, with
a brief interval, all her progeny, which must at the expiration of that
period have amounted, at the rate of two or three broods a year
and five or six young to a brood, to some fifty or sixty at least, were
' brought out' under the matronage oi their mother, to the morning
SPARK OW.
and evening entertainments which Patrick Corbett gave. Doubtless they
returned the compliment in the way of ' concerts of ancient music,'
for even the chirp of a Sparrow must be music to the dweller in a
London street. The interval above alluded to was a space of some two
or three months, during which time our female friend shunned the
society of the keeper of the itinerant coffee-shop, who had, most
unintentionallv, wounded her maternal feelings. An individual Sparrow
of one of her broods finding it at its first essay in the air, not so
easy a thing to fly up as to fly down, was removed by Patrick, out
of pure kindness, to his own house for the day, where it was
treated with the greatest care and affection. Nevertheless it died, and
the mother shewed her sense of the wrong of the supposed childstealing,
by abstaining for the period mentioned from the society of
her patron and friend; but in process of time, a new family arrived,
and for their sakes she overgot the injury, made up the quarrel,
which, as it takes two parties to make and in this case there was
only one, it was no difficult matter to do, and all went on, and for
ought I know, may still go on, at the corner of Tavistock Square*
as harmoniously and pleasantly as before: 'adsit omen.'
The following pleasing instance of both instinct and affection on
behalf of another individual of this species is from the pen of Mr.
William H. Cordeaux, in the 'Zoologist,' page 2798. 'Living in the
city portion of the great metropolis of London, I observed, one afternoon,
in the aperture generally left for the cellar, or kitchen window,
when underground, an unfledged House Sparrow, incapacitated from
flying to any distance, which had been inadvertently precipitated down
this same dungeon, across which, in an oblique direction, was laid
an iron bar, extending within a foot of the surface; the mother was
at the top, looking down with pity and alarm at the awkward
position of this, perhaps, her only child. Many and ingenious were
the attempts on the part both of parent and offspring for the regaining
of the latter's lost position; each and all proved futile and unavailing.
I looked on with a degree of pleasurable excitement, mixed with fear
and anxiety, lest the drama should be incomplete, by the flying away
of the mother, and the desertion of the child; but no, Nature's
inculcated ways on these points are perfect and all-sufficient, as most
beautifully this case proves, for although each new proposal seemed
to be blasted in the carrying out, at length the intelligent creature,
after considering for a moment, flics away, returns with a stout straw
in its beak, and rests for a few seconds on the edge; then conceive
my delight, when the little nestling, after a chirp or two from its
mother, learning no doubt the particulars of the project, climbs to