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



ground, where we usually find it. It does not crouch upon the 

 ground like the chippy, but with a lordly carriage holds itself 

 erect as it nimbly runs over the frozen crust. Sheltered from the 

 high, wintry winds in the furrows and dry ditches of ploughed 

 fields, a loose flock of these active birds keep up a merry hunt 

 for fallen seeds and berries, with a belated beetle to give the grain 

 a relish. As you approach the feeding ground, one bird gives a 

 shrill alarm-cry, and instantly five times as many birds as you 

 suspected were in the field take wing and settle down in the 

 scrubby undergrowth at the edge of the woods or by the way- 

 side. No still cold seems too keen for them to go a-foraging; 

 but when cutting winds blow through the leafless thickets the 

 scattered remnants of a flock seek the shelter of stone walls, 

 hedges, barns, and cozy nooks about the house and garden. It 

 is in midwinter that these birds grow most neighborly, although 

 even then they are distinctly less sociable than their small chippy 

 cousins. 



By the first of March, when the fox sparrow and the blue- 

 bird attract the lion's share of attention by their superior voices, 

 we not infrequently are deaf to the modest, sweet little strain 

 that answers for the tree sparrow's love-song. Soon after the 

 bird is in full voice, away it goes with its flock to their nesting 

 ground in Labrador or the Hudson Bay region. It builds, either 

 on the ground or not far from it, a nest of grasses, rootlets, and 

 hair, without which no true chippy counts its home complete. 



Vesper Sparrow 



(Pooccetes gramineus) Finch family 



Called also: BAY-WINGED BUNTING; GRASSFINCH; GRASS- 

 BIRD 



Length 5.75 to 6.25 inches. A little smaller than the English 

 sparrow. 



Male and Female Brown above, streaked and varied with gray. 

 Lesser wing coverts bright rufous. Throat and breast whit- 

 ish, striped with dark brown. Underneath plain soiled 

 white. Outer tail-quills, which are its special mark of iden- 

 tification, are partly white, but apparently wholly white as 

 the bird flies. 



162 



