SPARROWS

Preambling

     At the beginning of last year you were presented with a novel-length post that should have been titled “Jerry’s Jeremiad”, in that I ranted on about things I thought ludicrous and found irritating. Since those things - WORDS that should not be used, NAMES  that should not be called, and STATUES that should never have been erected - are still very much in the news, you will be spared my braying on about them. Don’t forget, however, that I did raise the Lenin-like question “What Is To Be Done?”  in relation to the problems those things cause and offered some answers. I stand by them and you can find them here (just scroll through the first few thousand words to the conclusion). 

     We are several days into this new year so I will not offer any blogging resolutions, particularly since I have not been so resolute about the others I made. I will also not present excuses for my failure to provide a post-a-day since many of them were covered in my “Chief Cunctator” post and will undoubtedly apply as we move forward. I will, however, try to keep the  promise I made in the jeremiad which was to avoid as much as possible the ludicrousness of the present. I hope we all have a good year. We will begin softly with the subject of sparrows.

Sparrows

   

     Sparrows are not at all spectacular, but we are not fortunate enough, here in southern Ontario, to have a loyal flock of Painted Buntings around our feeder. So we will work with what we have. I have observed that they are sociable and, like some of our neighbours, seem to have adapted very well to life on the pogey. 

     I thought I would try to learn more about them, but learned, about myself, that I would never be much of a birder. I had a look for the word ‘sparrow’ in the index of Peterson’s Eastern Birds and under it found around thirty kinds ranging from Bachman’s and Baird’s through Harris’ and Henslow’s all the way to White-crowned and White-throated. The list under ‘sparrows’ is also long in the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and one finds Botteri’s and Cassin’s which don’t appear in Peterson’s. The list is even longer in Wikipedia and one encounters many other related words like ‘passerines’ and ‘petronias’. Apart from learning about all these varieties, think about identifying them. One can just about double the number since the males and females often look different and the male of one type might look like the female of another. Depending, of course, on the time of the year.

Invasive Species 

    Abandoning pure ornithology in favour of a more historical approach I soon discovered again that the subject of sparrows is not so simple. As you are aware, however, I am behind in my blogging so I will have to keep this short and simply direct you to sources you can use if you want to learn more and start your own blog.    

     The sparrows I am supporting do not come from stock that originated in North America. Sparrows were imported into some cities in the eastern United States during the period from the 1850s to the 1890s and they were exported (and otherwise spread) to other cities and areas on the continent.  
  
     The sparrows were brought over from England and Europe for aesthetic as well as utilitarian reasons. Settlers apparently missed the birds they grew up with and, apart from nostalgia, offered the rationale that sparrows could be useful in ridding the cities of various insects. As an aside, there was another aesthetic purpose. One gentleman, Eugene Schieffelin, was responsible for importing starlings and other birds which appeared in the works of Shakespeare, but were missing in America.

     When these new immigrants flourished and multiplied some citizens began to see this introduced species as an invasive one. A familiar story. It was suggested that the aggressive sparrow was taking over and replacing native songbirds and that they were eating more fruits and crops than insects. It was argued that “Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English sparrow.”

   Not all citizens agreed, nor did the ornithologists who formed warring camps. Some suggested that sparrows should be eliminated even though there was a growing concern that too many other birds were being destroyed.  One positive result of the war was that each side began collecting a lot of data to try to learn if the introduction of the sparrow had been harmful biologically or economically. 

    I was surprised to learn that the rather bland sparrow had attracted so much attention and was the cause of such controversy. The ones here seem to be doing well. On the other hand, ironically enough, I have learned that the ones in the other London are disappearing at a rapid rate.

Sources:

 
     As mentioned, the sparrow war produced a lot of information. For some older sources (which are available to you) see:
Barrow’s The English Sparrow in North America… [This U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin is over 400 pages long.] 
Thomas G. Gentry, The House Sparrow at Home and Abroad, With Some Concluding Remarks Upon Its Usefulness, and Copious References to the Literature of the Subject. 
Edwin Richard Kalmbach, Economic Status of the English Sparrow

     If you want to learn in detail how the sparrows and starlings moved across the continent see: “Spread of the Starling and English Sparrow”, Leonard Wing, The Auk, Vol. 60, No.1, 1943, p.74.
     For a good account: “Elliott Coues and the Sparrow War,” Michael J. Brodhead
The New England Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 420-432
    For a longer study of the battles between ornithologists: “Sparrows for America: A Case of Mistaken, Identity,” Robin W. Doughty, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 14, No.2, Fall, 1980.
   About the starlings see: ‘What if We Had All the Birds From Shakespeare in Central Park,” Juliet Lamb, JSTOR Daily, June 9, 2016.
   For a larger perspective see: American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land, by Peter Coates - especially Chapter 2: “The Avian Conquest of a Continent”. It is from this source that the quotation about “the deplorable event” is taken.

    The decline in the number of sparrows in London, England is discussed in the book about the decline of moths in England - The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy,  pp.110-112.

Post Script:

     Once again I have saved some of the interesting bits which, once again, are totally unrelated to the subject at hand. You will note above that one of the authors mentioned  is Leonard Wing. Another frequently encountered in the sources cited is George Bird Grinnell. Not generally that close a reader, I did still notice that each man’s name had some relationship to their chosen career or area of interest. 

      Aware of the old tradition that people often had surnames related to their occupations (Masons and Carpenters), I wondered about those who ended up taking a job related to the name they were given. Would Mr. Wing or “Bird” Grinnell have been, say undertakers or circus performers, if not for their names? Is that why Margaret Court was a tennis player or why Francine Prose is a novelist? Did Jude Law flunk out of law school? What about Anthony Weiner? How does one answer such questions?

     Well, to save you the time that I wasted go directly to the subject of “Nominative Determinism” - the entry about it in Wikipedia is a good place to begin and that is where I found this brief definition: “Nominative determinism, literally "name-driven outcome", is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work which reflect their names.” There appears to be some debate over whether someone with a name like Sue Yoo was destined to become a lawyer or if the choice was simply a matter of coincidence rather than causality. 
     
     You can dig even deeper by looking for more under the subject of Aptronyms. And if you want to avoid whatever it is your attempting to write about you could always delve into Inaptronyms or Nominative Contradeterminism, which apply when there is a contradiction between the name and the occupation: Dr. Kill or Cardinal Sin or Don Black, the white supremacist, are some examples. I could go on.