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Chipping Sparrow

On June twenty-seventh, a Chipping Sparrow was seen flying through a small growth of pines. This was nothing unusual for Chipping Sparrows were plentiful about the place, but this bird had a green worm in its beak; consequently she was kept under observation until she disappeared in the top of a little pine. The voices of little birds could be heard in the same spot, but so well was the nest concealed that several circuits of the tree failed to reveal it. Carefully parting the boughs at the top, we opened to view the pretty scene of the mother Chippy, standing on the edge of a nest, admiring her family of four. She seemed to show neither anger nor fear at the interruption but viewed us with as much interest as we did her. It was a strange fact that this pair of birds, nesting more than half a mile from the nearest habitation, showed less fear than a pair that dwelt in a public park where people were constantly passing within three feet of them.

It was a very bright looking lot of little ones, reared in this cozy and secure home, where the sunlight filtered down Perfectly fearless, he stood between his little ones and the camera although the latter was but three feet away.

They build most frequently in orchard trees; the eggs are pale blue with black specks. through the same needles that protected them from the breezes that always swept across the top of the hill. The nest was made of small black rootlets and lined with the horsehair that is ever-present in nests of Chipping Sparrows. Besides the four young there was, in the nest, one egg, pale blue with small black specks on the large end , which had not hatched.