154 THE CHIPPING SPARROW. 



rows above, it is to be distinguished from most of its family 

 by its smaller size, and from them all by its chestnut crown, 

 shading into black in front, and by its clear grayish-white 

 breast and under parts. The sharp, chipping note, from 

 which it has derived its most common name, is certainly 

 characteristic, as is also its song, which is simply a prolonged 

 twitter — chip-ip-ip-ip-ip-ip-ip^ itself suggestive of the name 

 of the singer — frequently uttered throughout the day in 

 the breeding season, and not infrequently indulged in in the 

 night. 



The anxious mother, keeping watch at the cradle of her 

 sick child, may hear it in the lilac outside the window; or, 

 for the wakeful sufferer, it may every now and then break 

 the monotony of the slow, dark hours, while at the first 

 streak of the dawn it generally strikes the key-note of the 

 universal matin. 



In the location and structure of its nest, and, indeed, in 

 respect to the color of its eggs, Socialis is unlike the rest of 

 our Sparrows. For a nest, Mr. Burroughs says: *' It 

 usually contents itself with a half-dozen stalks of dry grass 

 and a few long hairs from a cow's tail, loosely arranged on 

 the branch of an apple-tree." While this is graphically 

 descriptive of many a nest, it is by no means exhaustive. 

 I have before me several quite bulky nests. One is com- 

 posed outwardly of a dense arrangement of fine rootlets, 

 and has a thick lining of "long hairs from a cow's tail" — 

 the same as much that passes for horse-hair in other nests — 

 or hairs from the tail or mane of some horse. The outside 

 of another is a pretty good bunch of coarse rootlets and 

 dried grasses loosely thrown together, containing a lining 

 of pigs' bristles sufficient to make a nest in itself. Another 

 consists entirely of horse-hair. In every case there is such 

 a quantity of hair used for lining as to justify the name of 



