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 smailer. 
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 
