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

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 wayside. 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.

Vesper Sparrow (Pooccetes gramineus) Finch family

Called also: BAY-WINGED BUNTING; GRASSFINCH; GRASS- BIRD Length—5.75 to 6.25 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female—Brown above, streaked and varied with gray.

Lesser wing coverts bright rufous. Throat and breast whitish, striped with dark brown. Underneath plain soiled white. Outer tail-quills, which are its special mark of identification, are partly white, but apparently wholly white as the bird flies.

Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds Range—North America, especially common in eastern parts from

Hudson Bay to Gulf of Mexico. Winters south of Virginia. Migrations—April. October. Common summer resident.

Among the least conspicuous birds, sparrows are the easiest to classify for that very reason, and certain prominent features of the half dozen commonest of the tribe make their identification simple even to the merest novice. The distinguishing marks of this sparrow that haunts open, breezy pasture lands and country waysides are its bright, reddish-brown wing coverts, prominent among its dingy, pale brownish-gray feathers, and its white tail-quills, shown as the bird flies along the road ahead of you to light upon the fence-rail. It rarely flies higher, even to sing its serene, pastoral strain, restful as the twilight, of which, indeed, it seems to be the vocal expression. How different from the ecstatic outburst of the song sparrow! Pensive, but not sad, its long-drawn silvery notes continue in quavers that float off unended like a trail of mist. The song is suggestive of the thoughts that must come at evening to some New England saint of humble station after a well-spent, soul-uplifting day.

But while the vesper sparrow sings oftenest and most sweetly in the late afternoon and continues singing until only he and the rose-breasted grosbeak break the silence of the early night, his is one of the first voices to join the morning chorus. No “early Worm,” however, tempts him from his grassy nest, for the seeds in the pasture lands and certain tiny insects that live among the grass furnish meals at all hours. He simply delights in the cool, still morning and evening hours and in giving voice to his enjoyment of them.

The vesper sparrow is preeminently a grass-bird. It first opens its eyes on the world in a nest neatly woven of grasses, laid on the ground among the grass that shelters it and furnishes it with food and its protective coloring. Only the grazing cattle know how many nests and birds are hidden in their pastures. Like the meadowlarks, their presence is not even suspected until a flock is flushed from its feeding ground, only to return to the spot when you have passed on your way. Like the meadowlark again, the vesper sparrow occasionally sings as it soars upward from its grassy home.

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White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucopbrys) Finch family Length—7 inches. A little larger than the English sparrow. Male—White head, with four longitudinal black lines marking off a crown, the black-and-white stripes being of about equal width. Cheeks, nape, and throat gray. Light gray underneath, with some buff tints. Back dark grayish brown, some feathers margined with gray. Two interrupted white bars across wings. Plain, dusky tail; total effect, a clear Female—Withashen gray.rusty head inclining to gray on crown. Paler throughout than the male. Range—From high mountain ranges of western United States (more rarely on Pacific slope) to Atlantic Ocean, and from

Labrador to Mexico. Chiefly south of Pennsylvania. Migrations—October. April. Irregular migrant in Northern States.

A winter resident elsewhere.

The large size and handsome markings of this aristocratic-looking Northern sparrow would serve to distinguish him at once, did he no* often consort with his equally fine-looking white-throated cousins while migrating, and so too often get overlooked. Sparrows are such gregarious birds that it is well to scrutinize every flock with especial care in the spring and autumn, when the rarer migrants are passing. This bird is more common in the high altitudes of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains than elsewhere in the United States. There in the lonely forest it nests in low bushes or on the ground, and sings its full love-song, as it does in the northern British provinces, along the Atlantic coast; but during the migrations it favors us only with selections from its repertoire. Mr. Ernest Thompson says, “Its usual song is like the latter half of the white-throat’s familiar refrain, repeated a number of times with a peculiar, sad cadence and in a clear, soft whistle that is characteristic of the group.” “The song is the loudest and most plaintive of all the sparrow songs,” says John Burroughs. “ It begins with the words fe-u, fe-u,fe-u, and runs off into trills and quavers like the song sparrow’s, only much more touching.” Colorado miners tell that this sparrow, like its white-throated relative, sings on the darkest nights. Often a score or more birds are heard singing at once after the 164

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

habit of the European nightingales, which, however, choose to sing only in the moonlight

White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) Finch family

Called also: PEABODY BIRD; CANADA SPARROW Length—6.75 to 7 inches. Larger than the English sparrow. Male and Female—A black crown divided by narrow white line.

Yellow spot before the eye, and a white line, apparently running through it, passes backward to the nape. Conspicuous white throat. Chestnut back, varied with black and whitish.

Breast gray, growing lighter underneath. Wings edged with rufous and with two white cross-bars. Range—Eastern North America. Nests from Michigan and Massachusetts northward to Labrador. Winters from southern

New England to Florida. Migrations—April. October. Abundant during migrations, and in many States a winter resident.

Pea-body, Pea-body, Pea-body,” are the syllables of the white-throat’s song heard by the good New Englanders, who have a tradition that you must either be a Peabody or a nobody there; while just over the British border the bird is distinctly understood to say, ” Swee-e-e-t Can-a-da, Can-a-da, Can-a-da.” " All day, whit-tle-ing, whit-tle-ing, whit-tle-ing,” the Maine people declare he sings; and Hamilton Gibson told of a perplexed farmer, Peverly by name, who, as he stood in the field undecided as to what crop to plant, dearly heard the bird advise, " Sow wheat, Pev-er-ly, Pev-er-ly, Pev-er-ly.” Such divergence of opinion, which is really slight compared with the verbal record of many birds’ songs, only goes to show how little the sweetness of birds’ music, like the perfume of a rose, depends upon a name. In a family not distinguished for good looks, the white-throated sparrow is conspicuously handsome, especially after the spring moult In midwinter the feathers grow dingy and the markings indistinct; but as the season advances, his colors are sure to brighten perceptibly, and before he takes the northward journey in April, any little lady sparrow might feel proud of the

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attentions of so fine-looking and sweet-voiced a lover. The black, white, and yellow markings on his head are now clear and beautiful. His figure is plump and aristocratic.

These sparrows are particularly sociable travellers, and cordially welcome many stragglers to their flocks—not during the migrations only, but even when winter’s snow affords only the barest gleanings above it. Then they boldly peck about the dog’s plate by the kitchen door and enter the barn-yard, calling their feathered friends with a sharp tseep to follow them. Seeds and insects are their chosen food, and were they not well wrapped in an adipose coat under their feathers, there must be many a winter night when they would go shivering, supperless, to their perch. In the dark of midnight one may sometimes hear the whitethroat softly singing in its dreams.

GREEN, GREENISH GRAY, OLIVE, AND

YELLOWISH OLIVE BIRDS

Tree Swallow Ruby-throated Humming-bird Golden-crowned Kinglet Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Solitary Vireo

Red-eyed Vireo White-eyed Vireo Warbling Vireo Ovenbird Worm-eating Warbler

Acadian Flycatcher

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

Black-throated Green Warbler

Look also among the Olive-brown Birds, especially for the Cuckoos, Alice’s and the Olive-backed Thrushes; and look in the yellow group, many of whose birds are olive also. See also females of the Red Crossbill, Orchard Oriole, Scarlet Tanager, Summer Tanager.

GREEN, GREENISH GRAY, OLIVE, AND

YELLOWISH OLIVE BIRDS

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) Swallow family Called also: WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW Length— 5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide wing-spread. Male—Lustrous dark steel-green above; darker and shading into black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts soft white. Female—Duller than male. Range—North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. Migrations—End of March. September or later. Summer resident.

“ The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the turtle and the

viii. 7.crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.”—Jeremiah,

The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree swallow comes skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with a wide sweep of the wings, in what appears to be a perfect ecstasy of flight. More shy of the haunts of man, and less gregarious than its cousins, it is usually to be seen during migration flying low over the marshes, ponds, and streams with a few chosen friends, keeping up an incessant warbling twitter while performing their bewildering and tireless evolutions as they catch their food on the wing. Their white breasts flash in the sunlight, and it is only when they dart near you, and skim close along the surface of the water, that you discover their backs to be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence.

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