FIRST-COMERS. 47 



door. The eggs are pea-green, scrawled, as though by a pen, 

 with black lines and dots. 



The food of the chippy during the spring and summer 

 consists largely of small insects, and he searches carefully 

 through the blossoming trees for the minute bugs that in- 

 fest the leaves and flowers, occasionally nipping off the sweet 

 and tender stamens of the apple and cherry blossoms, or 

 taking w r ee bites out of the early currants. He flits quietly 

 and busily all over the shrubbery, an image of a happy and 

 contented little workman, tr a -la -la- ing in a fine trilling 

 voice, that would be shrill were it not so sweet, an aria 

 from some bright bird-opera. 



The chippy is so easily watched that I do not propose to 

 tell all I have learned about it, and thus rob a reader of the 

 pleasure of learning its beautiful ways for himself. You 

 will not find it difficult to become acquainted with these 

 pigmy sparrows after you have recognized their chestnut 

 caps among your rose-bushes. You will see, also, that you 

 may tame them and teach them to come to you for crumbs. 

 They are almost the only birds that the insolent English 

 sparrows will be friendly toward ; and they are wonder- 

 fully devoted to their young : but I am forgetting that the 

 reader w r as to find all this out for himself! 



I have in mind the delta of a river whose shores are so 



