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Sparrow pie

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Subject: Sparrow pie
From: Anthea Fleming <>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:14:53 +1100
In his autobiography, 'Still digging' the archeologist Mortimer Wheeler wrote of being given an air-gun when he was a small boy. He shot a lot of sparrows in summer cornfields. Half a dozen corn-fed sparrows, plucked and drawn, cooked in a stoneware jam-jar with a lump of fat, made an excellent tea for a small boy. At one time in Europe, people used to hang up old jars and pots on cottages to encourage sparrows to nest - so the young ones could be eaten. Pigeon rearing was done in the same way.
Sparrows were of course viewed as an agricultural pest.

Anthea Fleming



On 7/02/2019 3:27 PM, Michael Hunter wrote:
The decline of  house sparrows must be multifactorial. Although probably 
irrelevant in their overall population, small birds such as sparrows apparently 
made delicious pies, slowly cooked entire for hours until bones and all were 
soft enough to eat.  These pies were responsible for the carnage of migrating 
songbirds in Southern Europe, which still goes on despite being forbidden by 
the EU ,   The generally shyest birds I have ever tried to see were in the 
Camargue in S France.

  Pie shy .

Had we had today's multicultural society in the 1930s when sparrows were 
collected , perhaps the starving workers of the Depression era might have 
gourmet dined occasionally,

And what did the Chinese do with all the sparrows when Mau decreed that they be 
exterminated?

               Food for thought,



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