The Chipping Sparrow

Teacher’s Story

HIS midget lives in our midst, and yet, not among all bird kind, is there one which so ignores us as does the chippy. It builds its nest about our houses, it hunts for food all over our premises, it sings like a tuneful grasshopper in our ears, it brings up its young to disregard us, and every hour of the day it “tsip-tsips” us to scorn. And, although it has well earned the name of “doorstep sparrow,” since it frugally gathers the crumbs about our kitchen doors, yet it rarely becomes tame or can be induced to eat from the hand, unless it is trained so to do as a nestling.

Its cinnamon-brown cap and tiny black forehead, the gray streak over the eye and the black through it, the gray cheeks and the pale gray, unspotted breast distinguish it from the other sparrows, although its brown back streaked with darker, and brown wings and blackish tail have a very sparrowish look; the two whitish wing bars are not striking; it has a bill fitted for shelling seeds, a characteristic of all the sparrows. Despite its seed-eating bill, the chippy’s food is thirty-eight per-cent insects, and everyone should read what Mr. Forbush says about the good work this little bird does in our gardens and to our trees. It takes in large numbers cabbage caterpillars, the pea louse, the beet leaf-miners, leaf hoppers, grasshoppers, cut worms, and does its best to annihilate the caterpillars of the terrible gypsy and browntail moths. In fact, it works for our benefit even in its vegetable food, as this consists largely of the seeds of weeds and undesirable grasses. It will often fly up from its perch after flies or moths, like a flycatcher; and the next time we note it, it will be hopping around hunting for the crumbs we have scattered for it on the piazza floor. The song of the chippy is more interesting to it than to us; it is a continuous performance of high, shrill, rapid notes, all alike so far as I can detect; when it utters many of these in rapid succession it is singing, but when it gives them singly they are call notes or mere conversation.

One peculiarity of the nest has given this sparrow the common name of hair-bird, for the lining is almost always of long, coarse hair, usually treasure trove from the tails of horses or cattle switched off against boards, burs or other obstacles. Of the many nests I have examined, black horsehair was the usual lining; but two nests in our yard show the chippy to be a resourceful bird; evidently the hair market was exhausted and the soft, dead needles of the white pine were used instead and made a most satisfactory lining. The nest is tiny and shallow; the outside is of fine grass or rootlets carefully but not closely woven together; it is placed in vine or tree, usually not more than ten or fifteen feet from the ground; a vine of a piazza is a favorite nesting site. Once a bold pair built directly above the entrance to our front door and mingled cheerfully with other visitors. Usually, however, the nest is so hidden that it is not discovered until after the leaves have fallen. The eggs are light blue tinged with green, with fine, purplish brown specks or markings scrawled about the larger end.

The chippy comes to us in April and usually raises two broods of from three to five “piggish” youngsters, which even after they are fully grown follow pertinaciously their tired and “frazzled out” parents and beg to be fed; the chippy parents evidently have no idea of discipline but indulge their teasing progeny until our patience, at least, is exhausted. The young differ from the parents in having streaked breasts and lacking the reddish crown. In the fall the chippy parents lose their red-brown caps and have streaked ones instead; and then they fare forth in flocks for a seed-harvest in the fields. Thereafter our chippy is a stranger to us; we do not know it in its new garb, and it dodges into the bushes as we pass, as if it had not tested our harmlessness on our own door-stone.

Reference—Wild Life, Ingersol, p. 132.