Abstract
CAN any of your readers elucidate this problem? When, a fortnight ago, the yellow crocuses flowered, the sparrows all at once made a terrible onslaught upon them. I found the gardener in Lincoln's Inn Gardens one day mourning over a fine line of crocus plants, every flower of which was in absolute ruins. All the work of the sparrows, he said. I have seen them, too, on the flower-boxes in my windows here frequently, tearing at the crocus blooms. Yet now, later, the blue and striped crocuses are blowing, and the sparrows leave them altogether untouched. What is there in the London bloom specially that attracts the London sparrow? The taste is, I think, peculiar to the town bird. In gardens at a distance from, and immediately around, London, I have watched plenty of yellow crocus blossoms, not one flower of which has been attacked.
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RENSHAW, A. Yellow Crocuses. Nature 15, 530 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/015530b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015530b0
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