Old World Sparrows & Related Weavers

Abstract

Of the various emotions engendered by birds, hatred is not usually the first that comes to mind. The genus Passer, however, includes two species which became objects of violent animosity.

During the tumultuous Cultural Revolution of the People's Republic of China in the 1960s and '70s, along with wall posters and protest signs advocating the downfall of Burgoise Capitalism and Yankee Imperialist Hegemony, there were often ones exhorting The People to "kill rats, flies, and sparrows!" Of course, sparrows were one of the "seven plagues" identified by the Great Helmsman himself, Chairman Mao (Travnicek 1986) which enabled one to demonstrate one's standing as a good communist and patriot by eliminating as many as he or she could.

My pious auntie, Marian Fong [Lindholm is of Swedish and Chinese descent], would pray in her room and sing hymns to drown out the regularly scheduled cacophony of everyone else on the block banging pots and pans and setting off firecrackers to frighten the Evil Birds into firing range. Uncle Peter, then Concert Master of the Shanghai Symphony and thus having no occasion to otherwise use air-rifles, always shot well over his minimum quota to ensure that Big Sister would not get in trouble at the next neighborhood brigade meeting when they tallied up the kill. Children were required to bring dead sparrows to school; I heard a recent NPR interview with Nien Cheng, whose 1987 book Life and Death in Shanghai details exactly how much trouble she got into during the Cultural Revolution - her daughter went to school with sparrows that "Cook" bought at the market.

The results of these programs were such that when Professor ].R. Hodges 0988), Chairman of the Council of the Avicultural Society visited China he reported, "The efforts of the Chinese authorities to rid Beijing of sparrows by Josef Lindholm, Ill Keeper/Birds

Fort Worth Zoological Park

have been so successful that, during a four-day visit to the city, I did not see a single sparrow nor any other wild bird." Dr. Travnicek (1986) notes, "As communication and dialect are two of China's great and current problems, in the people's confusion and zeal to please their beloved Chairman, many wild birds were destroyed." It appears there was a corresponding rise in insect pests, whose depredations on agriculture were worse than that of their former predators. At any rate, Chinese ornithologists now appear to be having some success with "Love the Bird" campaigns.

The targets of all this proletarian wrath were Tree Sparrows Passer montanus. This species, which in prerevolutionary China was a frequent subject of paintings and was an enormously popular cage-bird despite its being "as common in Peking as our English Sparrow is in London or Paris" (Delacour 1928), has a vast range across Europe and Asia. In 1870 and 1879, Tree Sparrows were released in St. Louis, and more than a century later "possibly 25,000" remain in the surrounding areas of Missouri and Illinois (Terres 1980). Though they do visit "grain fields to eat some wheat, oats and corn" (Ibid. 1980), their small numbers have prevented them from attaining the infamy that led to their destruction in China.

The failure of the Tree Sparrow to spread beyond the environs of St. Louis and east St. Louis is most likely due to the arrival in that area "around 1875" (Terres 1980) of Passer domestica, the House (or English) Sparrow, another species found throughout Europe as well as central Asia and India. The first attempt to establish this species in America, by the Brooklyn Institute (now a major art museum) in 1851, ended in failure (only 16 were imported) (Laycock 1966). The Institute then brought in a large shipment from Liverpool, releasing some right off the boat in 1852, and the rest "on the grounds of Greenwood Cemetery" (where a man was "hired to watch them") in 1853 (Ibid. 1966). The next three decades are one of the sorriest episodes in American aviculture. As George Laycock (1966), in a detailed essay, relates, "For a decade or more, European bird dealers were confronted with eager Americans who came with faith, hope and money, determined to purchase Europe's songbirds as their contributions to bringing beauty to the new world." A typical case cited by Laycock 0966) was a Mr. L.H. Smith of Strathroy, Ontario, who, in 1874, was sent six pairs of House Sparrows by a "New York bird dealer" who charged the then extravagant sum of one dollar per bird. In 1887, dead House Sparrows for pot pies were "a dollar a hundred on the Albany, New York, market" (Laycock 1966). In 1886, Mr. Smith wrote to the U.S. Government Ornithologist W.B. Barrows, "If all the sparrows in our town are mine, and my neighbors all say they are, then I have at least plenty for my money ... They are now in thousands in our town, and are plentiful in every town, city and village in this part of Ontario ... " (Laycock 1966).

L.H. Smith's letter to W.B. Barrows was in response to the latter's investigation in 1886, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as to whether English...