54 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 



The eggs, Darwin says, are pointed, oval, pale 

 dull green, thickly blotched with pale dull brown, 

 becoming confluent and entirely coloured at the 

 broad end* 



CHINGOLO SONG-SPARROW 



Zonotrichia pileata 



Above dusky grey, striped with blackish brown; a whitish stripe 

 from the eye to the nape; between the stripe and the grey on the 

 crown, black ; a narrow chestnut ring round the neck, widening to a 

 large patch on the sides of the chest, the patch bordered with black 

 on its lower part ; beneath ashy white ; length 5.7 inches. Female 

 duller in colour and rather smaller. 



THE common, familiar, favourite Sparrow over a 

 large portion of the South American continent is 

 the " Chingolo," Darwin says that " it prefers 

 inhabited places, but has not attained the air of 

 domestication of the English Sparrow, which bird 

 in habits and general appearance it resembles*" As 

 it breeds in the fields on the ground, it can never be 

 equally familiar with man, but in appearance it is 

 like a refined copy of the burly English Sparrow 

 more ' delicately tinted, the throat being chestnut 

 instead of black ; the head smaller and better pro- 

 portioned, and with the added distinction of a crest, 

 which it lowers and elevates at all angles to express 

 the various feelings affecting its busy little mind* 



On the treeless desert pampas the Chingolo is 

 rarely seen, but wherever man builds a house and 



