62 
The Tree Sparrow 
has been prepared begin to arrive from the north. They include many 
species, and one of the most numerous is the Tree Sparrow. The name 
of this bird seems to the writer to be a mistake, for this sparrow is more 
often seen in weed-patches and bushes than in trees, and it builds its 
nest on or near the ground. In Iowa, which may be considered as its 
center of abundance when in the United States, I have seldom seen one 
on a tree. 
This little, inconspicuous, gray-brown bird is much like a Chipping 
Sparrow, but a trifle larger, and distinguished easily by the dusky spot 
in the center of its otherwise unspotted, ashy breast. It has done its nest- 
ing in the far north and now, with wife and children, cousins and aunts, 
has come south, not in search of a milder climate, but 
to find food to sustain life over the winter, where the 
Food in 
Waste Places 
taller weeds will not be covered by snow, and their 
seeds may easily be obtained. The Tree Sparrow and Snowbirds ( Junco ) 
swarm into the waste fields and patches I have mentioned, and take up 
their abode for the winter, where they may be found throughout the 
season unless the situation be too much exposed to the wind. 
I recall one instance where a rather extensive piece of the prairie 
was covered with a dense growth of weeds. The situation was rather 
exposed, but the land sloped down to a creek, along which was an 
abundant growth of trees and bushes. Here were almost ideal conditions 
for a winter residence for the Tree Sparrow and its allies. The prairie 
afforded food during the day, and the trees and bushes gave shelter at 
night. On several occasions I visited the place just before sundown of 
a winter day, and watched the birds as they came in from their day’s 
foraging. For an hour or more there was a continuous flight from the 
high prairie to the wooded bottom-land by the creek. 
Often on a winter’s morning, after a blizzard, when the thermometer 
was showing from 25 to 30 degrees below zero, I have visited the weedy 
hedges along the fences to see how it fared with the sparrows, and have 
found the whole patch alive with birds, all twittering and apparently as 
happy and comfortable as they would be in a hedge of roses on a morning 
in June. On such occasions the newly fallen snow 
Fat and would be covered with chaff and seed-hulls that the 
appy birds had scattered about in getting their breakfast 
from ragweed and foxtail. 
If one of these birds be killed and skinned the searcher will find no 
poor, half-starved specimen, but a perfect ball of fat. Between the skin 
and the flesh of the body will be found a layer of fat constituting a set 
of under-flannels from an eighth to a fourth of an inch in thickness all 
over the bird’s body. It is evident that it is this layer of fat which pro- 
tects the bird from the terrific cold that it is called upon to endure. When 
one has had experience of the cold of some of the dry Northwestern 
States, has faced the wind that sometimes blows there in winter, and 
realizes how difficult it is to keep up his circulation and so sustain bodily 
