Tree Sparrow ii^ 



a ** good-bye. " No guests whom we ever had 

 beneath our roof left a more aching void than 

 that chipping sparrow family. How we hope 

 they will find their way back to the boxwood 

 tree from the Gulf States next April! 



TREE SPARROW 



Called also: Winter Chippy 



When the friendly little chippy leaves us in 

 autumn, this similar but larger sparrow cousin 

 comes into the United States from the North, 

 and some people say they cannot tell the two 

 birds apart or the field sparrow from either of 

 them. The tree sparrow, which, unlike the 

 chippy, has no black on his forehead, wears an 

 indistinct black spot on the centre of his breast 

 where the chippy is plain gray, and the field 

 sparrow is bufTy. The tree sparrow has a parti- 

 coloured bill, the upper-half black, the lower 

 yellow with a black tip, while the chippy has 

 an entirely black bill, and the field sparrow a 

 flesh-coloured or pale-red one. Only the tree 

 sparrow, which is larger than either of the 

 others, although only as large as a full grown 

 English sparrow, spends the winter in the 

 Northern United States, and by that time his 

 confusing relatives are too far south for compar- 

 ison. It is in spring and autumn that their 



