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Rh much of the sparrow's food is waste, about houses as well as roads and fields; but this waste in his absence would go to support better birds. Chaffinches feed on the roads like sparrows, so far as they give them a chance, and would be more numerous in their absence.

It may be said—in the absence of sparrows, would not other corn-eating birds increase enough to do as much mischief? My answer is that finches in the same numbers would be much less mischievous than sparrows, not having so great a preference for corn, and living more in the fields on wild seeds. Again, finches could not increase to the same extent as sparrows, as will be explained presently. Yellowhammers are very fond of corn, but their numbers have in most parts been reduced to a small fraction of what they formerly were by the practice of trimming the sides of hedges and ditches in summer, and so cutting off the supply of coarse grass seeds which support these birds when no corn is to be had. Yellowhammers will never be numerous enough to do serious damage. It has already been shown that finches are much less mischievous than sparrows in the garden. Yellowhammers, so far as I have observed (and they are numerous here), do no harm in the garden, unless by eating grass seeds sown on a lawn.

The only birds which seem to have become fewer here during the last fifteen years are blackcaps and garden warblers, which are among our best singers but are most voracious fruit-eaters. Both species were numerous here till the martins had fifty nests, when most of the blackcaps disappeared rather suddenly, and garden warblers two or three years later; there have been but a few of each species every year since. This looks as if these birds which live on insects till the fruit begins to ripen