When I say yegg I mean English sparrow, and if I could think of a worse name, equally descriptive of him, I would give it. This is the story of the foul deed, only one of many, no doubt, perpetrated by this cowardly crew. In late March I put out in my garden three bird boxes such as bluebirds love to inhabit. These were immediately inspected by the neighborhood flock of English sparrows, just beginning to pair off, and finally decided upon as undesirable, perhaps because I had intentionally placed no perch before the door. The English sparrow will build his nest in any impossible place to which he takes a fancy, but he greatly prefers, in choosing a new site, one that has a convenient perch close by the entrance. So these undesirable citizens decided that they did not care for my bird boxes and let them alone, much to my delight. Then came the bluebirds, bringing to our cold, raw spring their flashes of blue like bits of a heaven that is fairer than ours, a blue that is hope and dreams of happiness and all things noble yet gentle. There is no color like it as it glints across pale April skies and blooms on trees that have been bare and gray so long. So, too, no bird song is so dear as theirs. It is but a wee, melodious phrase which says again and again, “Cheerily; cheerily.” Yet it voices hope and contentment, and is so purely the expression of the joy of gentle, kindly lives that it touches all that is fond and kindly in the listener. Bluebirds will nest in the hollow of the pasture apple tree or in a last year’s flicker’s abandoned hole in a decayed stump, but of all places they most love a bird box near a dwelling, and, as I had hoped, a pair came early in April to inspect mine. They looked them all over appreciatively, seeming with delightful courtesy to the builder to find it hard to choose, but finally settled upon one in the pear tree, and began to build. Meanwhile the yeggs had been watching with jealous eyes, lurking in the shrubbery, sneaking about the eaves and making sallies in small numbers from around the barn. The English sparrow has been called pugnacious. He is nothing of the kind. He does not love a fight. Bird to bird, there is nothing too small to whip him. I have seen a chipping sparrow, which is the least among the pasture sparrows, send the poltroon scurrying to shelter with all his feathers standing on end. A cock bluebird, fighting like a gentleman, and like a gentleman fighting only when he must, will drive a half-dozen of them. The English sparrow has the true instincts of the browbeating coward, and loves to fight only when in overwhelming numbers he may attack a lone pasture bird without danger to himself.