110 BIRDS 



throughout the summer — a high, wiry trill, like the buzz of 

 the locust — ^may be heard in the dawn before the sky 

 grows even gray, or in the middle of the night; it 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 however monotonous such cheerfulness some- 

 times becomes when we are surfeited with real songs from 

 dozens of other throats, there are long periods of midsum- 

 mer silence that it punctuates most acceptably. 



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

 lar names are derived, is altogether different from the trill 

 which must do duty as a song to express love, content- 

 ment, everything that so amiable a little nature might feel 

 impelled to voice. 



Both birds carry fine twigs and grasses for the founda- 

 tion of the nest and, later, long horse hairs which they coil 

 around and around to form a lining. Where do they get so 

 many hairs? A few might have been switched out of the 

 horses' tails in the stable yard or dropped on the road, but 

 what amazingly bright eyes the birds must have to find 

 them, and how curious that chippies alone, of all the feath- 

 ered tribe, should always insist upon using them to line 

 their cradles. 



The Tree Sparrow 



When the friendly little chippy leaves us in autumn, this 

 similar but larger cousin comes into the United States from 

 the North, and some people say they cannot tell the two 

 birds apart or the field sparrow from either of them. The 

 tree sparrow, which, unlike the chippy, has no black on his 

 forehead, wears an indistinct black spot on the centre of his 

 breast where the chippy is plain gray, and the field sparrow 



