BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 279 



164. Spizella socialis (Wils.). 

 Chipping Sparrow. Chippy. 



Abundant summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



March 26, 1903, one seen, Belmont, R. Hoffmann. 



April 12 — October 25. 

 December 31, 1869, one seen, Watertown, W. Brewster. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 12 — 28. 



The familiar Chippy is one of the commonest and most widely distributed 

 of our smaller birds. It frequents almost every part of the Cambridge Region 

 excepting the wetter swamps and marshes, which it seldom visits except in 

 autumn, and the more extensive tracts of upland woods, in which it is not often 

 seen at any season. It is most numerously represented at the present time in 

 our farming districts, where apple orchards are its favorite haunts in summer, 

 and weed-grown fields in autumn. It breeds sparingly about the outskirts of 

 evergreen woods, and quite commonly in cedar-grown pastures, such as those 

 scattered along the crest and sides of the elevated ridge that extends from 

 Arlington to Waverley. 



Before the English Sparrows came, the Chippy was abundant throughout 

 most of Cambridge, but during the past twenty or twenty-five years it has been 

 steadily if slowly diminishing in numbers there. Of late it has nearly or quite 

 disappeared from the greater part of Cambridgeport, and it now occurs only 

 irregularly and very sparingly in the somewhat less densely populated regions 

 lying immediately to the north and northwest of Harvard Square and Norton's 

 Woods. I continue to see the trustful little birds in the grounds about our 

 house and even to find their neat, hair-lined nests in our lilacs and ornamental 

 evergreens, but I fear that such experiences are destined to be soon numbered 

 among those of the past, for the Chippy is evidently on the eve of deserting 

 our neighborhood. That its gradual withdrawal from Cambridge has resulted 

 chiefly if not wholly from the introduction of the House Sparrows, admits of 

 no reasonable doubt, for the Chippy is, by nature, one of the most contented, 

 phlegmatic and confiding of birds and it clings with exceptional tenacity to long 

 established haunts, especially those also much frequented by man. 



