Length: A little over 5 inches; the smallest of our common sparrows.

Male and Female: Crown reddish-brown, bill black; a black line extending through the eye; a gray line above the eye; back, wings, and tail brown; tail forked; rump gray; breast pale gray without streaks or spots. In the fall, the reddish crown becomes brown, streaked with black.

Call-note: Chip-chip.

Song: A monotonous trill, Chippy-chippy-chippy-chippy-chippy-chippy-chippy, more like the metallic sound made by a locust than the song of a bird.

Habitat: A “doorstep” bird that loves to spend the spring and summer near man. It is found in gardens, orchards, and plowed fields.

Nest: An unusually dainty nest made of grass and fine root-fibers, lined with horsehair, which has given to the chipping sparrow the name of “hair-bird.” The nest is built in trees or low bushes, sometimes very near the ground.

Eggs: Four or five pale-green eggs, mottled with dark markings.

Range: North America, from central Canada to Central America; commonest in the east.

This gentle, trustful sparrow is a general favorite. He is an unobtrusive little bird, seemingly contented to occupy his place in the world near to the haunts of man, unconsciously doing his important work without noisy demonstration. Like the brown creeper and the phoebe, he is of great economic value; like them, he is not particularly interesting, and he is without skill as a songster. But his monotonous trill is a pleasant part of the spring chorus, and his presence in our yards we should sorely miss.

Mr. Forbush speaks in high praise of this bird’s usefulness. He claims that the chippy is “the most destructive of all birds to the injurious pea-louse, which caused a loss of three million dollars to the pea-crop of a single state in one year.”[88] This sparrow eats the grubs that feed on beet-leaves, cabbages, and other vegetables; he devours cankerworms and currant worms, besides gypsy, brown-tail, and tent caterpillars, any one of which would entitle him to our protection. In the fall, with the decrease of life in the garden, he takes to the fields, where like other sparrows he feasts on seeds.

If it were more generally known how invaluable chipping sparrows are, people would guard them more carefully from marauding cats. I wish it might become as unlawful to let cats stalk abroad during the nesting season as it is to allow unmuzzled dogs to go about freely during dog-days. I know of a bird-lover near Painesville, Ohio, who never during nesting-time allowed her pet cat to stir outside of a good-sized enclosure without a weight attached to his collar. Some people have put bells on their cats’ necks, but while that is efficacious in alarming parent-birds, it is of no value in preventing the slaughter of young birds that have just left the nest. Mr. Forbush has written an appeal, which I wish was more widely known and heeded. It is called “The Domestic Cat” and was published under the direction of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.

Mr. Forbush wrote to such eminent experts and authorities on bird-life as Robert Ridgway, Dr. Frank M. Chapman, Dr. Witmer Stone, Dr. Henry W. Henshaw, Dr. William T. Hornaday, John Burroughs, William Dutcher, T. Gilbert Pearson, Dr. George W. Field, Dr. C. F. Hodge, Ernest Harold Baynes, Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, and others, for their opinions regarding the relative destructiveness of cats to the bird-life of the country. They were unanimous in their denunciation of cats as the “greatest destructive agency to our smaller song and insectivorous birds.”

Mrs. Wright says: “If the people of the country insist upon keeping cats in the same number as at present, all the splendid work of Federal and State legislation, all the labors of game- and song-bird protective associations, all the loving care of individuals in watching and feeding, will not be able to save our birds in many localities.”

Young chipping sparrows are spoiled bird-babies. They “tag” their gentle little parents about with unusual persistence, knowing that they will get what they demand. They frequently look as if they might not turn out to be excellent bird-citizens like their ancestors. When a noted ornithologist first saw Mr. Horsfall’s original drawing of the accompanying family of chipping sparrows he remarked, “That baby looks a million years old and steeped in sin!” But the duties of parenthood sober the youngsters, and the following year, they become in turn pleasant, docile, lovable little “Bird Neighbors.”