Length: About 5½ inches.

General Appearance: A small brown bird with a reddish back and bill, and a buff breast without spots or streaks.

Male and Female: Top of head reddish-brown; sides of head, nape of neck, and line over eye gray; bill reddish-brown; back reddish-brown, streaked with black and gray; rump brownish-gray; wings and tail brown, some wing-feathers edged with gray; sides and breast washed with buff.

Song: A sweet trill, consisting of the syllable dee repeated a number of times. It varies with different individuals, but is phrased somewhat as follows: Dee'-dee'-dee', de'-de, de'-de, de'-de, de'-de, de'-de, de'-de.

Habitat: Old overgrown pastures containing clumps of bushes, preferred to cultivated fields. This sparrow is not accurately named, for it is not strictly a bird of the fields.

Range: Eastern North America. Breeds from southern Minnesota, Michigan, Quebec, and Maine to central Texas, Louisiana, and northern Florida; winters from Missouri, Illinois, southern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to the Gulf Coast.

Some gorgeous but noisy birds, like blue jays, peacocks, and parrots, please only the eye; many quietly-dressed but sweet-voiced songsters are a delight to the ear. To the latter class belongs the Field Sparrow, a gentle little bird, so rarely seen as to recall to our minds the lines: