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House Sparrow origin quote



Hi Carolinabirders,

Still stumbling out from under the mass of stuff that piled up in my 
absence. I did compose a dense, barely literate summary of my Hawai'i 
bird sightings, and a few bugs, at one person's request; I can forward 
this to others if anyone's interested. Some of my slides came out nicely, 
although the I'iwi and Hawai'i Creeper sadly did not (darn rainforest 
lighting!). Should have the better ones on my website shortly, though not 
before I leave for tomorrow's Patteson pelagic.

In the meantime, at least one hummer has discovered the feeder at our 
place on Ninth Street now. Not sure if they're using the Salvia too, but 
we sure have plenty of flowers. My friend Caitlin, however, who moved 
only a couple of weeks ago and has absolutely nothing growing in her yard 
but landlord-manicured grass, has at least two at hers!

Finally dug out the quote from Elliott Coues about how House Sparrows 
came to the US. It comes from the fifth edition of his "Key to North 
American Birds". I found it second-hand in a book called "Natural History 
in America: From Mark Catesby to Rachel Carson", by Wayne Hanley. Lots of 
fascinating facts and amusing quotes, and lots of connections to the 
Carolinas. I probably laughed loudest and longest at a quote from 
Charleston's Reverend John Bachman, the country's first great 
mammalogist: "although from the great and the strong we have to apprehend 
danger, the feeble and apparently insignificant may have it in their 
power to annoy us almost beyond endurance..." (he was talking about the 
Striped Skunk at the time).

On with Hanley's exerpt from Coues:
"Repeatedly imported since 1858, and especially in the sixties, during a 
craze which even affected some ornithologists, making people fancy that a 
granivorous conirostral species would rid us of insect-pests, this sturdy 
and invincible little bird has overrun the whole country, and proved a 
nuisance without a redeeming quality. The original offender in the case 
is said to have been one Deblois, of Portland, Me., in 1858; but the 
pernicious activity of Dr. T.M. Brewer affected the city fathers of 
Boston in 1868-69, and even the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, 
about the same years. New York had the sparrow-fever in 1860-64, and 
Philadelphia was not as slow as usual in catching the contagion, in 1869. 
There is no need to follow the sad record further. Well-informed persons 
denounced the bird without avail during the years when it might have been 
abated, but protest has long been futile, for the sparrows have had it 
all their own way, and can afford to laugh at legislatures, like rats, 
mice, cockroaches and other parasites of the human race which we must 
endure... hence it wins in every competition with native birds, and in 
this country has as yet developed no counteractive influences to restore 
a disturbed balance of forces, nor any check whatever upon its limitless 
increase. Its habits need not be noted, as they are already better known 
to every one than those of any native bird whatever, but few realize how 
many million dollars the bird has already cost us."

I assume the Dr. Brewer, with whom Coues had a series of public debates, 
is the namesake of Brewer's Sparrow and Brewer's Blackbird. Funny how an 
advocate of such a dumb idea gets birds named in his honor, plus a mole 
and a sedge, while the apparently much wiser Coues gets, as far as I 
know, only a Rice Rat and subspecies of deer and Cactus Wren... Hanley 
adds another Coues quote from a journal called "The Osprey" in May 1897: 
"I have sometimes wondered if chagrin at defeat in the Sparrow War did 
not hasten Dr. Brewer's demise (January 23, 1880). The war practically 
ended with his death, though it was long before sentimentalists ceased to 
exhibit hysteria. I naturally lost all active interest in the subject 
when I had proven my case to the satisfaction of the public, and the 
Sparrow had proven his case - which was that he had come to stay..."

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/