[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
House Sparrow origin quote
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: House Sparrow origin quote
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 19:43:04 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
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/