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MARCH 15, 190a 
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I Birds from a 
Door-Yard 
Delights That Lie Within One’s Easy 
Reach 
A'" 
BY ^ALPH HOFFMANN 
A pair of ^chipping sparrows are my only 
other Constant fellow-residents. Bach year 
I And the nest, sometimes in the spruces, 
often in an apple-tree, once in the grapevine. 
The male has the honor of receiving, in 
Mr. Brewster's list of Cambridge birds, 
highest honors for punctuality; in 1903 he 
appeared on .March 26, breaking all previ- 
ous records by four or five days. 
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The Length of Life of the Chipping Sparrow and Robin. — It is so 
rarely that one gets a chance to estimate the length of life of many of our 
birds that this bit of information may be worth presenting. The late Prof. 
Alpheus Hyatt has kindly sent me the following note on the Chipping 
Sparrow ( Spizella socialis) from a friend of his, Mrs. H. S. Parsons, who 
lives in Annisquam, Mass. “The bird you wish to know about,” she 
writes, “came to notice first in the door yard. It seemed quite tame and 
would not fly when crumbs were thrown out. Then I began to feed it from 
my hand, and it soon became so tame that it would fly to meet me, and 
would come in at the open door or window. I would call it to me at any 
time if it was within sound of my voice. It went away in October and 
returned the last of April. It would come to the doorstep all ready for 
crumbs and would light on my hand and peck a piece of cake. I would 
have known it from its manner, but it had lost a joint of one toe, which 
I thought a sure mark. It would always bring its young to the door, and 
sometimes into the house, and they, too, would be very tame. One sum- 
mer it brought with its own a young bunting and fed it, a much larger 
bird than the sparrow. The chippy came nine summers and the last one 
one morning after a cold rain storm the last of May, came to the win- 
dow seeming weak and sick. We fed it but it grew weaker and in a few 
hours it died.” I have a like story reported to me from Milton, Mass., 
where a Robin returned for four years. — Reginald Heber Howe, Jr., 
Long-wood, Mass. Auk, XIX, April., 1902, p/>. 2.o<i-Z<>S 
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