The most serious enemy the birds at large have, after man himself, is the bird of prey. Hawks and owls capture a large quantity of our smaller birds. Now the hawks and owls are for the most part shy of man. They have gotten a bad reputation, especially if they are of any size, because of their more or less pronounced proclivities for seizing our domestic poultry, and consequently many people will fire upon a hawk or an owl who would probably fire upon no other bird. By living close to man the sparrow is largely saved from the danger of capture by these carnivorous creatures, and this is the first and a very important element of the advantage to the sparrow of living near man. But there is the additional advantage that man scatters about him, in one way or another, a very considerable amount of waste food. I have suggested that the seeds in the droppings of the horse form a large proportion of the sparrow's food, and horses are to be found only with men. In the neighborhood of man's home, unless he has become sanitary to a degree which has only been attained in recent years, there is usually more or less garbage, kitchen offal of one sort or another. To this the sparrow has easy access and from it he makes many a meal. But this fearlessness of man gives him still another advantage which his competitors fear to use, it provides him with nesting sites. Man has the faculty of putting up ornamental trimmings on his house, and there is no spot the sparrow chooses more willingly in which to build his nest than the ornamental quirks and cornices of man's architecture. A Corinthian column with comely leaves in its capital seems especially designed for the comfort of the sparrow, and his distinctly untidy nest is the familiar disfigurement of almost every ornate public building. These are the advantages which come to the sparrow from his willingness to associate with man, and there are comparatively few birds with whom he must share them. Few birds select the immediate neighborhood of man's home for their nests. They may live in the neighboring trees, they may haunt his orchard, but his house, for the most part, they decline to frequent.