NEWS OR NOT NEWS?

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 99, 21 January 1936, Page 11

NEWS OR NOT NEWS?

Tale of Two Sparrows at the

Basin Reserve

AUTHORITIES DO NOT AGREE

i By

N.C.L.,

If a dog bites a man it is not news, but if a man bites a dog it is. Similarly, if a circus elephant eats a ton of hay a day it is only routine, but if a circus elephant attempts to play an arpeggio with a live electric wire and has an arpeggio played on its nervous centres by the current the event is worth six inches and three headings. 'That is very straightforward, but the trouble is that a niau has never been known to bite a dog and that suicidally-minded elephants are equally rare. And then, at tlie cricket yesterday, I saw something which seemed to provide a very good substitute for dog- . biting men and power-struck pachyderms. Outside the north entrance to the Basin Reserve stand two old ticket boxes. 'Their guttering lias long since begun to fall away from the iron sheets of the roof, leaving an entrance to the tent-shaped space inside. Certainly there is nothing strange in that, nor was there anything peculiar about the sight of two sparrows standing on tlie edge of the drain. But there was something decidedly unusual in what they were doing. They were doing things that they should have been doing four months ago or so I thought. They were building a nest, with all. the important agitation that generally characterises sparrows in September, and which they forget again as soon as their last nestling has fluttered doubtfully away to find out if what father said of life is true. And the nest was not an old one, being patched up for hibernation purposes. From beneath the sheet-iron roof hung wisps of fresh straw and new odds and ends of the oilier things sparrows use to build their homes. Every now and again, too, one or the other of the two birds went away exploring for further rafters and suitable timbers. Or, it was a nest without a doubt —a January one, and therein I thought was the news.

The photographer did not think so. “What yon know about news— —,” he said, and I took it that he was not being complimentary.” Nor did my discovery excite any interest in tlie first authority I approached. Certainly he was an authority on agriculture, but I thought he might lie able to appreciate the value of what: I had seen.

“Sparrows," he said, “are small brownish-grey birds of the family Fringillidae, indigenous to Europe, where they ar e very common, and naturalised in various other countries, especially the house-sparrow, Passer doinesticus .” "Spell that again," 1 said.

"——- Passer doinesticus. in the country they do a tremendous amount of good, and in the towns they eat young peas. 'They build nests all the year round and so what you have seen means nothing at all.” A second authority was. similarly unperturbed by my news. “Why,” he said, “that’s nothing, absolutely .nothing. One I caught with a dry fly up at M—— was five pounds if it was an ounce. And what a fight it gave me! You should have seen .” I found a third authority.

"Yes, I know what a sparrow is,” he said, “and I know when it nests. It starts about September or October and it finishes in December. The weather is too hot after then; nests are pretty warm things, you know. And when they have finished nesting the sparrows don’t use them again. The nests are too full of lice. lou’ve seen sparrows nesting in January? No, you haven’t! They never begin to build nests as late as this. You have obviously been mistaken. Good-day.” I have been down to the Basin Reserve again. Those sparrows are nesting. and I still think it's news.