Boston’s War on Sparrows

​By Noah Good, Marketing Manager and History Program Educator

In so many ways, January 20, 1896 was a typical winter day in Boston. Pedestrians opened their umbrellas against the quickly falling snow and pulled their coats tightly against the cold. But walking past the King’s Chapel Burying Ground, they saw something surprising: thousands of sparrows.

King's Chapel Burying Ground in snow, Boston, ca. 1928-1971. Photo by Samuel Chamberlain.

An article from The Boston Daily Globe reported: “Hundreds tarried on the sidewalks near the King’s chapel burying ground to see the sight, and sharp and varied were the comments. The naked trees within the enclosure of the dead were heavy with importunate bird life.”

The English Sparrow (Passer Domesticus) in North America, Especially in Its Relations to Agriculture. Image by Merriam, C. Hart, and Walter B. Barrows.

These were English sparrows (also called house sparrows) – small, stout birds with cone-shaped beaks. The birds “perched in the elms and chestnuts, piping as if their very lives depended on the volume of the noise they made.” 
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“Nothing like it had ever before been seen,” the Globe reported. Though several people nearby had seen “previous gatherings” of sparrows in the burying ground, “the grand congress of the passer domesticus of yesterday afternoon out-birded any other congregation of birds of which there is a memory.”

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The birds kept arriving in “batches” until 4 pm. All of these assembled birds “were giving throat,” filling the air with song. The noise was overwhelming. “The chorus of the birds reminded one man of a ring-spinning room in a cotton factory with full speed on. To others the plaint was like the hissing of 10,000 peanut roasters.” The English Sparrow’s song is not one of its better qualities. A participant in an 1889 study of English sparrows wrote, “To many our singing birds form the very poetry of the year; and when they are replaced, or their music is drowned by these noisy and dirty Sparrows, so that half the charm of spring is gone, no little suffering results … I have often counted a hundred and more successive chirps by one Sparrow, in exactly the same key, a real torture to the ear.”

Life cycle of the cankerworm, from Annual Report of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station 1885.

In 1896, English sparrows were a fairly new sight in Boston. A non-native species, they’d only been introduced to the city twenty-eight years ago. In the mid-nineteenth century, cities across North America began importing English sparrows. Brooklyn, NY was first, introducing the birds in 1850-1852. The goal was pest control. Two species of caterpillar were stripping the trees in public parks and city streets: the caterpillars of the geometrid moth and the spring cankerworm moth. English sparrows would feed on these caterpillars and help preserve the beauty of public parks. 

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Why rely on English sparrows and not the native bird population? Some argued that the interest in English sparrows came from Europeans who felt an “immigrant-longing for a ‘home-bird.’” This feeling proved powerful, especially when coupled with general ignorance about native birds and the belief that “anything European must of necessity be better than anything native.” Whatever the reason, the “craze” for importing English sparrows spread across America. 

According to journalist George Punchard, the city of Boston ordered one hundred and fifty sparrows. Only twenty bedraggled sparrows arrived, “tailless and nearly featherless.” In autumn 1868, these birds were released into Boston Common. As in Brooklyn, Boston’s house sparrows seemed at first to be helpful, reducing the caterpillar population and protecting the trees in the Common and the Public Garden. 

Boston ornithologist Thomas Mayo Brewer championed the sparrows’ cause. The birds did have a tendency to eat grain, he acknowledged, but who would not “cheerfully pay his proportion of loss in an extra price for his flour” in exchange for the sparrows’ “bright and cheerful companionship in the dreary desolation of our winter”? Brewer was confident in the sparrows’ success, believing that “the house-sparrow will erelong become one of our most common and familiar favorites.” 

Affection for the sparrows was so strong that Elliott Coues, one of the sparrows’ prominent opponents, was harshly criticized. In 1877, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher reproached Coues: “No raven shall ever bring him meat. His name shall be known in the kingdom of birds as a public foe. A price shall be put upon his head, and on some day unawares he shall be surrounded by swarm of sparrows, darkening the sun, and multitudinous as the locusts of Minnesota.” The birds would pluck the hair from Coues’ head and the threads from his clothing, taking it to build nests for more sparrows. “No requiem shall be heard. … And sparrows shall have peace in all the land!”

But affection toward the English sparrow soon soured. As Boston’s sparrows multiplied, so too did the city’s problems. The sparrows nested in gutters, pipes, and roof drainage, causing overflows. Their nesting also damaged vines and foliage. 

Their “filth” was also upsetting. In Washington, D.C. “the benches and other resting places in parks and squares are so befouled that frequently not one is available, and the adventurous stranger who lingers long in such places is sure to have his apparel, as well as his pleasure, marred by the omnipresent Sparrow.”

The sparrows also pushed out native birds. A 1925 book on Massachusetts birds writes, “By attacking in numbers the Sparrows were able to kill birds as large as the Robin or the Northern Flicker; when only two or three Sparrows were together, they were more likely to follow a native bird about until, disgusted, it left the neighborhood.”

It also turned out that English sparrows don’t really eat that many insects. One critic speculated that if native birds had received the kind of encouragement sparrows had, the worm problem would have been solved. In fact, introducing sparrows made the insect problem worse. Native birds fed on the same insects that sparrows had been imported to kill. Sparrows, meanwhile, didn’t feed on hairy caterpillars at all and pushed out the native birds that did. As a result, the hairy caterpillar population exploded. 

​Some also considered the birds a moral threat. English sparrows chattered, bullied other birds, and mated often. Naturalists Thomas Gentry and Claude T. Barnes both observed this latter activity with a stopwatch and were quite alarmed. Gentry described the birds as “saucy knaves.” 

As English sparrows spread across North America, more and more people raised concerns about the bird’s impact. By 1880, public opinion had turned against the English sparrow. A scathing report from 1889 wrote, “Like a noxious weed transplanted, to a fertile soil, [the sparrow] has taken root and become disseminated over half a continent before the significance of its presence has come to be understood.” 

There are interesting parallels between the language used in the sparrow war and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the period. When English sparrows first arrived, they were lovingly likened to Jamestown’s colonists. But as their reputation sank, English sparrows were no longer seen as “noble” colonists, but as “lowly” immigrants. They were alternately called “immigrant [finches],” “songless immigrants,” and “filthy, noisy, quarrelsome, and bloodthirsty [foreigners].” Though claiming to be unbiased, many ornithologists described English sparrows in ways that feel all too similar to anti-immigrant stereotypes. 

These sparrow-hating ornithologists connect to a bigger historical picture. The late 19th century saw an increase in immigration to New England, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe. By 1880, almost 64% of Bostonians were first or second generation immigrants. Many Boston Brahmins–Anglo-Saxons from prominent families–worried about the “quality” of these new arrivals. In 1894, a group of prominent Bostonians founded the Immigration Restriction League and began pushing for reform. Some advocates for restricted immigration used the English sparrow to make their point. 

If the English sparrow being an “immigrant” was a problem, the “English” part of its name was no help either. Many Northerners still harbored resentment towards the British from the Civil War, as some members of the British public had sympathized with the Confederacy. 

For the people watching the “congress of sparrows” in King’s Chapel’s Burying Ground in January 1896, was this sight beautiful? Or was it a worrying sign of how numerous Boston’s house sparrows had become?

Three years later, in March 1899, over 400 people submitted a petition to Boston mayor Josiah Quincy VI. The group (organized by the American Society of Bird Restorers) asked the mayor to deal with “the noxious imported Finch, known as the English Sparrow.” They argued that the birds’ “defilement” of buildings and trees were “not only a source of much expense, but an aesthetic disgrace to Boston.” 

​Taking the petition to heart, Mayor Quincy announced a campaign against the birds. On March 13, the public grounds department began destroying house sparrow nests. Quincy was clear that traps and poison were not to be used.

“No Anglo-American Alliance in the Feathered World.” from The Boston Globe on March 4, 1899.

Five men, led by W. J. Kennedy, went through the Common knocking nests down from trees, electric poles, monuments, and buildings. One reporter wrote, “Men with ladders, new white-handled pikes and freshly painted carts for refuse, went chasing about under the bare trees, looking for all the world like a lot of overgrown boys out on a holiday robbing birds’ nests.” The original plan was to sweep the Common, then the Public Garden, followed by other public parks and grounds. This work was to last until October.

“Eviction of Sparrows Commences.” from The Boston Globe on March 14, 1899.

It seems the war on sparrows caused some Bostonians to sympathize with the birds. The Boston Daily Advertiser received letters from concerned citizens. One woman wrote: “I have for several years fed some 20 or 30 of the little fellows, and it would be a great grief to me to find in my garden some poor little wounded one, who has been left to die as best it may.” One reporter saw “well-known business and professional men” leave parcels of crumbs for the birds on the Common.

“The Women’s Plea.” from The Boston Globe on March 25, 1899.

The Massachusetts’ Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was especially opposed to Quincy’s bird war. Mayor Quincy received so many letters objecting to the sparrow war that he held a public hearing on March 17. Over 200 people attended the three-hour hearing, with 105 voting in support of the sparrows and 70 voting against.

“The Last Roost of the English Sparrow.” from The Boston Globe on March 17, 1899.

Mayor Quincy finally called off the nest-smashing on April 5. He argued that the efforts were too much of a drain on the public grounds department, distracting them from their usual responsibilities.

Having survived this attack, English sparrows rebuilt their nests around the city. While many nests had been destroyed in the Boston Common, the Public Garden had not been cleared, and the sparrows continued to flourish there. 

​In a poem published by The Boston Daily Advertiser, a sparrow and a pigeon discuss the sparrow war.

“Oh, well, ‘Tommy-Atkins’-sparrow, you really have to go–
        Mayor Quincy knows his business–he’s to be governor, don’t you know!”
“We’ll see about it, Mister Pigeon, we’ll vote the other way–
        And you’ll find us on bright earth when Quincy’s passed away.”

Today, English sparrows can be found all across the city, nesting in the public gardens and parks. They still occasionally visit the King’s Chapel Burying Ground—though in far less impressive numbers than in 1896.

Bibliography

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Brewer, Thomas Mayo. “The European House-Sparrow.” The Atlantic Monthly. May 1868. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1868/05/the-european-house-sparrow/628410/.

Brodhead, Michael J. “Elliott Coues and the Sparrow War.” The New England Quarterly 44, no. 3 (1971): 420–32.

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Chamberlain, Samuel. King's Chapel Burying Ground in snow, Boston. ca. 1928-1971. Photograph. Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:q811r8815. 

Chapman, Frank M., ed. “The So-Called Sparrow War in Boston.” In Bird-Lore, vol. 1. The Macmillan Company, 1899.

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“Eviction of Sparrows Commences.” The Boston Globe. March 14, 1899.

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“The Last Roost of the English Sparrow.” The Boston Globe. March 17, 1899.

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Merriam, C. Hart, and Walter B. Barrows. The English Sparrow (Passer Domesticus) in North America, Especially in Its Relations to Agriculture. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1889.

“No Anglo-American Alliance in the Feathered World.” The Boston Globe. March 4, 1899.

“The English Sparrow in New England.” In The New England Magazine, vol. 29, with Fletcher Osgood. Boston : [New England Magazine Co.], 1903. http://archive.org/details/newenglandmagaz07unkngoog.

Punchard, George. “English Sparrows on Boston Common.” The Congregationalist (Boston), November 9, 1871. 

"Sparrows Rebuild Nests." Boston Daily Advertiser, 24 Mar. 1899, p. 2. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, link-gale-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/apps/doc/GT3007097740/NCNP?u=mlin_b_bpublic&sid=bookmark-NCNP&pg=2&xid=cfbfe2c7. Accessed 27 Dec. 2025. 

"Vive Le Sparrow." Boston Daily Advertiser, March 25, 1899, 2. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers (accessed December 27, 2025). https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/apps/doc/GT3007097831/NCNP?u=mlin_b_bpublic&sid=bookmark-NCNP&pg=2&xid=63a32211. 

“The Women’s Plea.” The Boston Globe. March 25, 1899.