(_Spizella socialis_) Finch family
_Called also_: CHIPPY; HAIR-BIRD; CHIP-BIRD; SOCIAL SPARROW
(Illustration facing p. 159)
_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 horsehair, which always lines the grassy cup 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.