be inferred that nestling sparrows are fed with little else than corn and peas, while another instance taken alone might be thought to prove that insects were almost their only food.
The following is, according to my observation, an outline of the life-history of a country sparrow. After being reared in the nest on some or all the sorts of food just mentioned, according to the notions of his parents (and these notions differ greatly with the same opportunities), if there is nothing ready for him in the fields, he lives, on corn and green peas if these things are to be found, about buildings, yards, gardens and roads (unless a field of early peas tempt him out sooner), till corn is forming in the ear, when he and his kind begin their ravages on it as soon as it will afford them a little milky stuff in the ears. If he does not leave the nest till this time or later, he quickly betakes himself to the cornfields. As time goes on, he and his fellows go further into and stay more in the fields, till, by September or earlier, most of them live in them altogether, sitting on the hedges by day and roosting in them by night, and feeding entirely on corn, until, generally at some time in October, all the corn on the stubbles is sprouting[1] or rotting; he then eats a few wild seeds; but when these and damaged corn are all he can get in the fields, he soon leaves them and goes home to houses and farmyards, getting his food with fowls and pigs, on the roads and at stacks, especially after these are threshed out. He lives thus till spring, except that at autumn seed-time he has a turn at the wheatfields, picking up what grain he can get at before it has time to sprout. In March I have sometimes found a small soft beetle or two, occasionally a small caterpillar,
- ↑ Sparrows, unlike larks, do not seem to like sprouted corn.
