122 Birds Every Child Should Know 
and who sometimes travels in migrating flocks 
with his cousins, the white-throated sparrow is 
the handsomest member of his plain tribe. 
FOX SPARROW 
Do you imagine because he is called the fox 
sparrow that this bird has four legs, or that he 
wears a brush instead of feathers for a tail, or 
that he makes sly visits to the chicken yard 
after dark? When you see his rusty, reddish- 
brown coat you guess that the foxy colour of 
it is alone responsible for his name. His light 
breast is heavily streaked and spotted with 
brown, somewhat like a thrush’s, and as he is 
the largest and reddest of the sparrows, it is not 
at all difficult to identify him. 
In the autumn, when the juncos come into 
the United States from Canada, small flocks of 
their fox sparrow cousins, that have spent the 
summer from the St. Lawrence region and 
Manitoba northward to Alaska, may also be 
expected. They are often seen in the junco’s 
company among the damp thickets and weeds, 
along the roadsides and in stalky fields bounded 
by woodland. The fox sparrow loves to scratch 
among the dead leaves for insects trying to 
hide there, quite as well as if he were a chicken 
or a towhee or an oven-bird who kick up the 
