EASTERN AND CANADIAN CHIPPING SPARROWS 1177 



some telegraph wires. The chippy followed suit but always landed on 

 the ground instead of returning to the wh'es." 



The chipping sparrow is numbered among those birds that have been 

 observed sparring with their reflection in a pane of glass (Forbush, 

 1929). 



Robert A. Norris submits the follo^ving interesting note on their 

 behavior in the whiter flocks: 



"One characteristic that I have noticed repeatedly among winter 

 flocks of chipping sparrows is the proneness of individuals — usually 

 but two at a time — to engage in brief, almost momentary, aerial dis- 

 putes or 'clashes' involving excited call notes and agile maneuvers — 

 sometimes upward, sometimes in other directions. While still in the 

 air the birds separate so that their dogfight, if it may be so caUed, seems 

 to end as suddenly as it begins. The reasons for flight combats in 

 chippies are not at all clear; they do not seem to be directly associated 

 either with food supply or with temporary territorial holdings. I have 

 not observed field sparrows giving these aerial performances at any 

 time. Indeed, these actions, if seen among members of a distant flock 

 of small sparrows, enable one to predict ^vith confidence that the 

 sparrows will turn out to be chippies." 



Voice. — Donald J, Borror analyzed 461 chipping sparrow songs by 

 means of an audiospectrograph from recordings of mdividuals in 

 Maine, Pennsj'lvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan. The 

 following account is taken from his work (Borror, 1959) : 



Songs of the Chipping Sparrow * * * have been described * * * as a simple 

 trill or rapid series of notes, all on one pitch, and of a dull and unmusical quality. 

 The only variations mentioned are in speed ("fast" or "slow") and in the number 

 of notes in the song. * * * Chipping Sparrow songs arc generally simple 

 trills * * *. 



The individual phrases of the song contain from one to three slurred notes. 

 The slurring is usually quite rapid, in some cases over an octave or more in 0.01 

 second; it is this rapid slurring of the notes that gives the song its dull and un- 

 musical quality. The notes are usually clear, but in a few songs each phrase 

 contains a buzzy note. The notes may be up-slurred or down-.slurred (or both) ; 

 the phrases in most songs contain both up-slurred and down-slurred elements. 



* * * Very little variation, never more than a few thousandths of a second, 

 was found in the length of different phrases in the same song. 



* * * The number of phrases in the songs studied varied from 9 to 72, and 

 averaged 33.31. A few songs whose phrases were two- or three-noted had the 

 last phrase incomplete. 



* * * The phrase length, measured from the beginning of one phrase to the 

 beginning of the next, varied from 0.044 to 0.145 (average, 0.087) second; this 

 corresponds to a variation in rate of from 22.5 to 6.9 (average, 11.5) phrases per 

 second. * * * In general, the shorter the phrases the more phrases there were 

 in the song. * * * The songs varied in length from 0.94 to 6.86 (average, 2.61) 

 seconds. * * * There was no evidence in the recordings studied of any significant 

 geographic variation in song pattern in this species. 



