Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. An inch shorter than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Under the eye, on the back of the neck, underneath, and
on the lower back ash-gray. Gray stripe over the eye, and a
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 however 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 weakness 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.
Unlike most of the sparrows, the little chippy frequents high trees, where its
nest is built quite as often as in the low bushes of the garden. The
horse-hair, which always lines the grass" up that holds its greenish-blue,
speckled eggs, is alone responsible for the name hair-bird, and not the
chippy's hair-like trill, as some suppose.