Length -- 6.5 to 7.25 inches. Nearly an inch longer than the
English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Upper parts reddish brown, varied with ash
gray, brightest on lower back, wings, and tail. Bluish slate
about the head. Underneath whitish; the throat, breast, and
sides heavily marked with arrow-heads and oblong dashes of
reddish brown and blackish.
Range -- Alaska and Manitoba to southern United States. Winters
chiefly south of Illinois and Virginia. Occasional stragglers
remain north most of the winter.
Migrations -- March. November. Most common in the migrations.
There will be little difficulty in naming this largest, most plump and reddish
of all the sparrows, whose fox-colored feathers, rather than any malicious
cunning of its disposition, are responsible for the name it bears. The male
bird is incomparably the finest singer of its gifted family. His faint tseep
call-note gives no indication of his vocal powers that some bleak morning in
early March suddenly send a thrill of pleasure through you. It is the most
welcome "glad surprise" of all the spring. Without a preliminary twitter or
throat-clearing of any sort, the full, rich, luscious tones, with just a tinge
of plaintiveness in them, are poured forth with spontaneous abandon. Such a
song at such a time is enough to summon anybody with a musical ear out of
doors under the leaden skies to where the delicious notes issue from the
leafless shrubbery by the roadside. Watch the singer until the song ends, when
he will quite likely descend among the dead leaves on the ground and scratch
among them like any barn-yard fowl, but somehow contriving to use both feet at
once in the operation, as no chicken ever could. He seems to take special
delight in damp thickets, where the insects with which he varies his seed diet
are plentiful.
Usually the fox sparrows keep in small, loose flocks, apart by themselves, for
they are not truly gregarious; but they may sometimes be seen travelling in
company with their white-throated cousins. They are among the last birds to
leave us in the late autumn or winter. Mr. Bicknell says that they seem
indisposed to sing unless present in numbers. Indeed, they are little inclined
to absolute solitude at any time, for even in the nesting season quite a
colony of grassy nurseries may be found in the same meadow, and small
companies haunt the roadside shrubbery during the migrations.
GRASSHOPPER SPARROW (Ammodramus savannarum passerinus) Finch
family