White Sparrows

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 4

White Sparrows

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I notice in your issue of today’s date a statement that “spairuws commonly mob and kill or drive away those of their kind that are injured or deformed,” which may or may not be true, but I don’t think that they interfere with white ones which are in other respects normal. I have personally seen two pure white sparrows. The first was in September, 1888, when 1 was iu Edinburgh and waiting at the railway station for the train to catch the Leith to London steamer. The bird was one of a flock on the platform and behaved like the others. The second was when I was motoring in liindmarsh, a suburb of Adelaide, in December 3924. My companion asked xne if I had noticed that there was auwhite one in a flock that had just flown round the comer. I had not seen it so I stopped the car and we wrent round the corner, where we saw a w’hite sparrow' sitting on the roof of a building. There was a pure white starling on the Manawatu golf course some twenty-five years or so ago, but I cannot remember the date. I do not think that any species of bird attack their white fellows. —I am, etc., BIRD LOVER. April 4, 1939.