122 Birds Every Child Should Know 



and who sometimes travels in migrating flocks 

 with his cousins, the white-throated sparrow is 

 the handsomest member of his plain tribe. 



FOX SPARROW 



Do you imagine because he is called the fox 

 sparrow that this bird has four legs, or that he 

 wears a brush instead of feathers for a tail, or 

 that he makes sly visits to the chicken yard 

 after dark? When you see his rusty, reddish- 

 brown coat you guess that the foxy colour of 

 it is alone responsible for his name. His light 

 breast is heavily streaked and spotted with 

 brown, somewhat like a thrush's, and as he is 

 the largest and reddest of the sparrows, it is not 

 at all difficult to identify him. 



In the autumn, when the j uncos come into 

 the United States from Canada, small flocks of 

 their fox sparrow cousins, that have spent the 

 summer from the St. Lawrence region and 

 Manitoba northward to Alaska, may also be 

 expected. They are often seen in the j unco's 

 company among the damp thickets and weeds, 

 along the roadsides and in stalky fields bounded 

 by woodland. The fox sparrow loves to scratch 

 among the dead leaves for insects trying to 

 hide there, quite as well as if he were a chicken 

 or a towhee or an oven-bird who kick up the 



