Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
blackish brown one apparently through it. Dark red-brown 
crown. Back brown, slightly rufous, and feathers streaked 
with black. Wings and tail dusty brown. Wing-bars not 
conspicuous. Bill black. 
Female — Lacks the chestnut color on the crown, which is streaked 
with black. In winter the frontlet is black. Bill brownish. 
Range — North America, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico 
and westward to the Rockies. Winters in Gulf States and 
Mexico. Most common in eastern United States. 
Migrations — April. October. Common summer resident, many 
birds remaining all the year from southern New England 
southward. 
Who does not know this humblest, most unassuming little 
neighbor that comes hopping to our very doors ; this mite of a 
bird with “one talent ” that it so persistently uses all the day and 
every day throughout the summer ? Its high, wiry trill, like the 
buzzing of the locust, heard in the dawn before the sky grows 
even gray, or in the middle of the night, 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 how- 
ever monotonous such cheerfulness sometimes becomes when we 
are surfeited with real songs from dozens of other throats, there 
are long periods of midsummer silence that it punctuates most 
acceptably. 
Its call-note, chip ! chip ! from which several of its popular 
names are derived, is altogether different from the trill which 
must do duty as a song to express love, contentment, everything 
that so amiable a little nature might feel impelled to voice. 
But with all its virtues, the chippy shows lamentable weak- 
ness of character in allowing its grown children to impose upon 
it, as it certainly does. In every group of these birds throughout 
the summer we can see young ones (which we may know by 
the black line-stripes on their breasts) hopping around after their 
parents, that are often no larger or more able-bodied than they, 
and teasing to be fed; drooping their wings to excite pity for 
a helplessness that they do not possess when the weary little 
mother hops away from them, and still persistently chirping for 
food until she weakly relents, returns to them, picks a seed from 
the ground and thrusts it down the bill of the sauciest teaser in 
the group. With two such broods in a season the chestnut 
feathers on the father’s jaunty head might well turn gray. 
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