130 THE BREWER SPARROW. 
Chipping Sparrows are very devoted parents and the sitting female will some- 
times allow herself to be taken in the hand. The male bird is not less sedulous 
in the care of the young, and he sometimes exercises a fatherly oversight of 
the first batch of babies, while his mate is preparing for the June crop. 
No. 51. 
BREWER’S SPARROW. 
A. O. U. No. 562. Spizella breweri Cassin. 
Description.—ddu/ts: Upperparts grayish brown, brightest brown on back, 
everywhere (save on remiges and rectrices ) streaked with black or dusky, narrow- 
ly on crown, more broadly on back and scapulars, less distinctly on rump; wing- 
coverts and tertials varied by edgings of brownish buff ; flight-feathers and rectrices 
dark grayish brown or dusky with some edging of light grayish brown; a broad 
pale buffy superciliary stripe scarcely contrasting with surroundings; underparts 
dull whitish tinged on sides and across breast by pale buffy gray. Bill pale 
brown darkening on tip and along culmen; feet pale brown, iris brown. Young 
birds are less conspicuously streaked above; middle and greater coverts broadly 
tipped with buffy forming two distinct bands; breast streaked with dusky. 
Length 5.30 (1.35); wing 2.44 (62); tail 2.38 (60.5); bill .38 (8.8); tarsus 
68 (17.4). 
Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; general streaked appearance; absence 
of distinguishing marks practically distinctive; sage-haunting habits. 
Nesting.—Nest: of small twigs and dried grasses, lined with horse-hair, set 
loosely in sage-bush. Eggs: 4 or 5, greenish blue, dotted and spotted, sometimes 
in ring about larger end, with reddish brown. Ay. size .67x.49 (17x 12.4). 
Season: April, June; two broods. 
General Range.—Sage-brush plains of the West, breeding from Arizona to 
British Columbia and east to western Nebraska and western Texas; south in 
winter to Mexico and Lower California. 
Range in Washington.—Open country of the East-side, abundant summer 
resident ; occasionally invades Cascade Mountains (only in late summer ?). 
Migrations.—S pring: Yakima March 29, 1900. 
Authorities.—[“ Brewer's sparrow,” Johnson, Rep. Gov. W. T. 1884 (1885), 
22]. Dawson, Auk, XIV, 1897, 178. D2. Sst. Ss?. 
Specimens.—U. of W. P. C. 
IT IS never quite fair to say that Nature produces a creature which 
harmonizes perfectly with its surroundings, for the moment we yield tribute 
of admiration to one creature, we discover amid the same circumstances 
another as nearly perfect but entirely different. When we consider the Sage 
Sparrow we think that Nature cannot improve much upon his soft grays 
by way of fitness for his desert environment; but when we come upon the 
Brewer Sparrow, we are ready to wager that here the dame has done her 
