House sparrow

So we all know that birds die by getting hit by cars.

I want you to tell me what are the five most commonly vehicle stricken birds in the United States in North America?

Well, I can tell you just this year alone, I've hit three house sparrows.

There's something about house sparrows that just makes them love to fly under cars.

That is correct.

That is one of the five.

But each returning autumn sees the columns of the black army moving southward with apparently unthinned ranks, while year by year the harried platoons of ducks and geese return fewer and less frequent.

Those detested foreigners, the English sparrows, increase and multiply in spite of bitter winters and their righteous persecution, while our natives, the beloved songbirds, diminish in numbers.

In every hand we find the undesirable in animated nature, the birds and beasts that we would gladly be rid of maintaining their numbers, while those whose increase we desire are losing ground and tending toward extinction.

The prospect for the sportsman of the future is indeed gloomy, unless he shall make game of the pest and become a hunter of skunks and a shooter of crows and sparrows.

When a stack has been thrashed ever so far from the yard, the sparrows in the yard have always had their crops full of the grain.

Open footnote, G. H. Gurney, The House Sparrow, open bracket, London, 1885, close bracket, page five.

close footnote.

True, the sparrows are extremely particular in keeping their domains free from the invasions of strangers.

In all such cases, the little birds, though very much inferior in force to the bird of prey, prove superior to it by their common action.

Open footnote.

As to the house sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T. W. Kirk, described as follows the attack of these impudent birds upon an unfortunate hawk.

He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand carol.

How do you say a sparrow in...?

Gorrión.

Yes.

And then I was, "Oh, no, it's a mouse." But the, the mouse looked right at me.

Which means at number one, John.

It's the House Sparrow.

Yes.

Yes.

End of The Voice of the Bell Chapter 25 of Korean Fairy Tales by William Elliot Griffis This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Noel Badrian The King of the Sparrows The Korean children are awakened every morning by the twittering of the sparrows.

These little birds build their nests among the vines on the roof and along the eaves.

The people plant melon, gourd, and mock orange seeds along the sunny sides of their houses in the springtime.

Thus stripped of all their possessions because of the man's cruelty to the birds, the wicked fellow and his wife would have starved except for the kindness of the good man who treated the sparrows kindly.

For the rest of their days, the old couple lived on their neighbors' charity.

End of The King of the Sparrows.

Chapter twenty-six of Korean Fairy Tales by William Elliot Griffis.