88 IN BIRD LAND. 
were blue, while the rest of his plumage was brown. 
He made a unique and pretty picture as he sat 
atilt on a blackberry stem, asking me with loud 
Tsips to admire his quaint toilet. [arly in the 
spring I have seen indigo birds in whose plumage 
the tints were quite differently blended and arranged. 
What a party-colored suit the young bluebird 
wears! His breast, instead of being plain brick-red 
as in the case of the adult bird, is profusely striped 
with dark brown on a background of soiled white ; 
and his upper parts, in lieu of the warm azure of 
riper years, are a lustrous brown curiously mottled 
with tear-shaped blocks of white; while his wings 
and tail have already assumed the normal blue of 
this species. In the days of his youth the chipping- 
sparrow also dons a striped vest, so that, if it were 
not for his smaller size, it would be difficult to dis- 
tinguish him from his relative, the grass-finch. 
My admiration was especially stirred, one mid- 
summer day, by the dainty appearance of a small 
coterie of bush-sparrows flitting about on a railroad 
which I was pursuing on foot; a large patch on 
their wings was of a dark, glossy brown tint, 
extremely pretty, and looking precisely as if it had 
been painted by the deft hand of an artist. ‘Their 
under parts were variously streaked with white and 
dusk. At first I scarcely recognized my familiar 
little sylvan friends ; but their intimacy with several 
adult specimens, as well as several well-known diag- 
nostic markings, settled the question of their identity 
beyond a doubt. 
