(_Spizella monticola_) Finch family
_Called also_: CANADA SPARROW; WINTER CHIPPY; TREE BUNTING;
WINTER CHIP-BIRD; ARCTIC CHIPPER
(Illustration facing p. 167)
_Length_--6 to 6.35 inches. About the same size as the English
sparrow.
_Male_--Crown of head bright chestnut. Line over the eye,
cheeks, throat, and breast gray, the breast with an indistinct
black spot on centre. Brown back, the feathers edged with
black and buff. Lower back pale grayish brown. Two whitish
bars across dusky wings; tail feathers bordered with grayish
white. Underneath whitish.
_Female_--Smaller and less distinctly marked.
_Range_--North America, from Hudson Bay to the Carolinas, and
westward to the plains.
_Migrations_--October. April. Winter resident.
A revised and enlarged edition of the friendly little chipping
sparrow, that hops to our very doors for crumbs throughout the mild
weather, comes out of British America at the beginning of winter to
dissipate much of the winter's dreariness by his cheerful twitterings.
Why he should have been called a tree sparrow is a mystery, unless
because he does not frequent trees--a reason with sufficient
plausibility to commend the name to several of the early
ornithologists, who not infrequently called a bird precisely what it
was not. The tree sparrow actually does not show half the preference
for trees that its familiar little counterpart does, but rather keeps
to low bushes when not on the ground, where we usually find it. It
does not crouch upon the ground like the chippy, but with a lordly
carriage holds itself erect as it nimbly runs over the frozen crust.
Sheltered from the high, wintry winds in the furrows and dry ditches
of ploughed fields, a loose flock of these active birds keep up a
merry hunt for fallen seeds and berries, with a belated beetle to give
the grain a relish. As you approach the feeding ground, one bird gives
a shrill alarm-cry, and instantly five times as many birds as you
suspected were in the field take wing and settle down in the scrubby
undergrowth at the edge of the woods or by the way-side. No still cold
seems too keen for them to go a-foraging; but when cutting winds blow
through the leafless thickets the scattered remnants of a flock seek
the shelter of stone walls, hedges, barns, and cozy nooks about the
house and garden. It is in midwinter that these birds grow most
neighborly, although even then they are distinctly less sociable than
their small chippy cousins.
By the first of March, when the fox sparrow and the bluebird attract
the lion's share of attention by their superior voices, we not
infrequently are deaf to the modest, sweet little strain that answers
for the tree sparrow's love-song. Soon after the bird is in full
voice, away it goes with its flock to their nesting ground in Labrador
or the Hudson Bay region. It builds, either on the ground or not far
from it, a nest of grasses, rootlets, and hair, without which no true
chippy counts its home complete.