When nesting time arrives—that is to say, towards the end of the summer—they give up their gregarious habits and live in pairs, billing and kissing like turtle-doves in the orchard or wild crab-trees, where a flat, bulky nest is rather carelessly built of twigs, grasses, feathers, strings—any odds and ends that may be lying about. The eggs are usually four, white tinged with purple and spotted with black. Apparently they have no moulting season; their plumage is always the same, beautifully neat and full-feathered. Nothing ever hurries or flusters them, their greatest concern apparently being, when they alight, to settle themselves comfortably between their over-polite friends, who are never guilty of jolting or crowd-ing. Few birds care to take life so easily, not to say indolently.

Among the French Canadians they are called RAcolIet, from the color of their crest resembling the hood of the religious order of that name. Every region the birds pass through, local names appear to be applied to them, a few of the most common of which are given above. Of the three waxwings known to scientists, two are found in America, and the third in Japan.

Brown Creeper (Certhia familiaris americana) Creeper family Length— 5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female—Brown above, varied with ashy-gray stripes and small, lozenge-shaped gray mottles. Color lightest on head, increasing in shade to reddish brown near tail. Tail paler brown and long; wings brown and barred with whitish.

Beneath grayish white. Slender, curving bill. Range—United States and Canada, east of Rocky Mountains. Migrations—April. September. Winter resident.

This little brown wood sprite, the very embodiment of virus

Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds

tuous diligence, is never found far from the nuthatches, titmice, and kinglets, though not strictly in their company, for he is a rather solitary bird. Possibly he repels them by being too exasperatingly conscientious.

Beginning at the bottom of a rough-barked tree (for a smooth bark conceals no larvae), the creeper silently climbs upward in a sort of spiral, now lost to sight on the opposite side of the tree, then reappearing just where he is expected to, flitting back a foot or two, perhaps, lest he overlooked a single spider egg, but never by any chance leaving a tree until conscience approves of his thoroughness. And yet with all this painstaking workman’s care, it takes him just about fifty seconds to finish a tree. Then off he flits to the base of another, to repeat the spiral process. Only rarely does he adopt the woodpecker process of partly flitting, partly rocking his way with the help of his tail straight up one side of the tree. Yet this little bird is not altogether the soulless drudge he appears. In the midst of his work, uncheered by summer sunshine, and clinging with numb toes to the tree-trunk some bitter cold day, he still finds some tender emotion within him to voice in a “wild, sweet song” that is positively enchanting at such a time. But it is not often this song is heard south of his nesting grounds. The brown creeper’s plumage is one of Nature’s most successful feats of mimicry—an exact counterfeit in feathers of the brown-gray bark on which the bird lives. And the protective coloring is carried out in the nest carefully tucked under a piece of loosened bark in the very heart of the tree.

Pine Siskin (Spinus pinus) Finch family

Called also: PINE FINCH; PINE LINNET Length—4.75 to 5 inches. Over an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female—Olive-brown and gray above, much streaked and striped with very dark brown everywhere. Darkest on head and back. Lower back, base of tail, and wing feathers pale sulphur-yellow. Under parts very light buff brown, heavily streaked.

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Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds Range—North America generally. Most common in north lati- Migrations—Erratictudes. Winterswintersouth visitorto the GulffromofOctoberMexico. to April. Uncommon in summer.

A small grayish-brown brindle bird, relieved with touches of yellow on its back, wings, and tail, may be seen some winter morning roving on the lawn from one evergreen tree to another, clinging to the pine cones and peering attentively between the scales before extracting the kernels. It utters a call-note so like the English sparrow’s that you are surprised when you look up into the tree to find it comes from a stranger. The pine siskin is an erratic visitor, and there is always the charm of the unexpected about its coming near our houses that heightens our enjoyment of its brief stay.

As it flies downward from the top of the spruce tree to feed upon the brown seeds still clinging to the pigweed and goldenrod stalks sticking out above the snow by the roadside, it dips and floats through the air like its charming little cousin, the goldfinch. They have several characteristics in common besides their flight and their fondness for thistles. Far at the north, where the pine siskin nests in the top of the evergreens, his sweet-warbled love-song is said to be like that of our “wild canary’s,” only with a suggestion of fretfulness in the tone.

Occasionally some one living in an Adirondack or other mountain camp reports finding the nest and hearing the siskin sing even in midsummer; but it is, nevertheless, considered a northern species, however its erratic habits may sometimes break through the ornithologist’s traditions.

Smith’s Painted Longspur (Calcarius pictus) Finch family Length—6.5 inches. About the size of a large English sparrow. Male and Fe7naie—Upper parts marked with black, brown, and white, like a sparrow; brown predominant. Male bird with more black about head, shoulders, and tail feathers, and a whitish patch, edged with black, under the eye. Underneath pale brown, shading to buff. Hind claw or spur conspicuous.

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Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds Range— Interior of North America, from the arctic coast to Illinois and Texas. Migrations—Winter visitor. Without fixed season.

Confined to a narrower range than the Lapland longspur, this bird, quite commonly found on the open prairie districts of the middle West in winter, is, nevertheless, so very like its cousin that the same description of their habits might very well answer for both. Indeed, both these birds are often seen in the same flock. Larks and the ubiquitous sparrows, too, intermingle with them with the familiarity that only the starvation rations of midwinter, and not true sociability, can effect; and, looking out upon such a heterogeneous flock of brown birds as they are feeding together on the frozen ground, only the trained field ornithologist would find it easy to point out the painted longspurs.

Certain peculiarities are noticeable, however. Longspurs squat while resting; then, when flushed, they run quickly and lightly, and “rise with a sharp click, repeated several times in quick succession, and move with an easy, undulating motion for a short distance, when they alight very suddenly, seeming to fall perpendicularly several feet to the ground.” Another peculiarity of their flight is their habit of flying about in circles, to and fro, keeping up a constant chirping or call. It is only in the mating season, when we rarely hear them, that the longspurs have the angelic manner of singing as they fly, like the skylark. The colors of the males, among the several longspurs, may differ widely, but the indistinctly marked females are so like each other that only their mates, perhaps, could tell them apart.

Lapland Long-spur (Calcarius lapponicus) Finch family

Called also: LAPLAND SNOWBIRD; LAPLAND LARK BUNTING Length—6. 5 to 7 inches. A trifle larger than the English sparrow. Male—Color varies with season. Winter plumage Top of head black, with rusty markings, all feathers being tipped with white. Behind and below the eye rusty black. Breast and underneath grayish white, faintly streaked with black. Above,

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Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds

reddish brown with black markings. Feet, which are black, have conspicuous, long hind claws or spur. Female—Rusty gray above, less conspicuously marked. Whitish below. Range— Circumpolar regions; northern United States; occasional in Middle States; abundant in winter as far as Kansas and the Rocky Mountains. Migrations—Winter visitors, rarely resident, and without a fixed season.

This arctic bird, although considered somewhat rare with us, when seen at all in midwinter is in such large flocks that, before its visit in the neighborhood is ended, and because there are so few other birds about, it becomes delightfully familiar as it nimbly runs over the frozen ground, picking up grain that has blown about from the barn, when the seeds of the field are buried under snow. This lack of fear through sharp hunger, that often drives the shyest of the birds to our very doors in winter, is as pathetic as it is charming. Possibly it is not so rare a bird as we think, for it is often mistaken for some of the sparrows, the shore larks, and the snow buntings, that it not only resembles, but whose company it frequently keeps, or for one of the other longspurs.

At all seasons of the year a ground bird, you may readily identify the Lapland longspur by its tracks through the snow, showing the mark of the long hind claw or spur. In summer we know little or nothing about it, for, with the coming of the first flowers, it is off to the far north, where, we are told, it depresses its nest in a bed of moss upon the ground, and lines it with fur shed from the coat of the arctic fox.

Chipping Sparrow (Spi^ella socialis) Finch family

Called also: CHIPPY; HAIR-BIRD; CHIP-BIRD; SOCIAL SPARROW 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

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Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds

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. 150

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