I see that your school-teachers weren't into short-hand comments on your work... or maybe you never did anything that was VG... ☹️😉 (Apologies for my earlier sloppy capitalization.)
No, it's not. And the full quote is:
(my italics) which has (rightly, as we now see) softened a lot from the apparent 'larger than a sparrow' certainty of #1.
I'm saying what I said. But, to expand, the photos clearly suggest a bird smaller than a typical sparrow in both bulk and length - and I'm happy that the OP is mistaken in her/his assessment of size. Mistakes in size-assessment are very very common, even in experienced observers; we see them almost daily in these columns.