House Sparrow - 1894

Passer domesticus

A common resident. but rather scarce in the " mountain " districts.

Mr. Dix writes: " Comparatively a scarce bird; during the severe weather last February, I did not notice more than three or four together at any time in the yards. Nothing has struck me more than the scarcity of this bird." When we first went to reside at Stone Hall we had no Sparrows there. At length one or two appeared, and their increase was rapid. It was not until we one day visited Llanrian, on the north coast, that we saw Sparrows in anything like the numbers to which we have been accustomed in England. The old church tower there is thickly covered with ivy in which hundreds of Sparrows were harbouring and nesting.

The absence of cornlands, and the sparsely inhabited country, in which isolated mountain farms are far apart, would account for the comparative scarcity of the House Sparrow, in most places a far too abundant pest. Mr. Jefferys informs us that the House Sparrow is by no means common at Tenby.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands