Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 



blackish brown one apparently through it. Dark red-brown 

 crown. Back brown, slightly rufous, and feathers streaked 

 with black. Wings and tail dusty brown. Wing-bars not 

 conspicuous. Bill black. 



Female Lacks the chestnut color on the crown, which is streaked 

 with black. In winter the frontlet is black. Bill brownish. 



Range North America, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico 

 and westward to the Rockies. Winters in Gulf States and 

 Mexico. Most common in eastern United States. 



Migrations April. October. Common summer resident, many 

 birds remaining all the year from southern New England 

 southward. 



Who does not know this humblest, most unassuming little 

 neighbor that comes hopping to our very doors ; this mite of a 

 bird with "one talent " that it so persistently uses all the day and 

 every day throughout the summer ? Its high, wiry trill, like the 

 buzzing of the locust, heard in the dawn before the sky grows 

 even gray, or in the middle of the night, starts the morning 

 chorus; and after all other voices are hushed in the evening, its 

 tremolo is the last bed-song to come from the trees. But how- 

 ever monotonous such cheerfulness sometimes becomes when we 

 are surfeited with real songs from dozens of other throats, there 

 are long periods of midsummer silence that it punctuates most 

 acceptably. 



Its call-note, chip ! chip ! from which several of its popular 

 names are derived, is altogether different from the trill which 

 must do duty as a song to express love, contentment, everything 

 that so amiable a little nature might feel impelled to voice. 



But with all its virtues, the chippy shows lamentable weak- 

 ness of character in allowing its grown children to impose upon 

 it, as it certainly does. In every group of these birds throughout 

 the summer we can see young ones (which we may know by 

 the black line-stripes on their breasts) hopping around after their 

 parents, that are often no larger or more able-bodied than they, 

 and teasing to be fed; drooping their wings to excite pity for 

 a helplessness that they do not possess when the weary little 

 mother hops away from them, and still persistently chirping for 

 food until she weakly relents, returns to them, picks a seed from 

 the ground and thrusts it down the bill of the sauciest teaser in 

 the group. With two such broods in a season the chestnut 

 feathers on the father's jaunty head might well turn gray. 



150 



