You will not be likely often to find this bird in your garden or about the lawn. He is called the field sparrow, but he lives mostly in dry old pastures, partly overgrown with bushes and trees. His nest is placed on the ground, or in a low bush, and is often lined wholly or in part with hair. He and the chipper belong to what is called the same genus. That is to say, the two are so nearly related that they have the same surname. The chipper is Spizella socialis, the field sparrow is Spizella pusilla; just as two brothers will have one name in common, say, Jones, William, and Jones, Andrew.
The chipper is a favorite on account of his familiar, friendly ways. The field sparrow deserves to be known and loved for his music. Few birds sing better, in my opinion, though many make more display and are more talked about. The beauty of the song is in its sweetness, simplicity, and perfect taste. It begins with three or four longer notes, which run at once into quicker and shorter ones, either on the same pitch or a little higher. Really the strain is almost too simple to make a description of: a simple line of pure melody, one may say. You must hear it for yourself. Sometimes the bird gives it out double, so to speak, catching it up again just as he seems ready to finish. The tone is the clearest of whistles, and the whole effect is most delightful and soothing. It is worth anybody’s while to spend a season or two in bird study, if only to learn this and half a dozen more pieces of our common wild-bird music.
The field sparrow’s times of arrival and departure are practically the same as the chipper’s. Neither bird is hard to see, or very hard to distinguish; a bit of patience and an opera-glass will do the business; though you may have to puzzle awhile over either of them before making quite sure of your knowledge. In bird study, as in any other, we learn by correcting our own mistakes.
IX
SOME APRIL SPARROWS
For the first three weeks of April the ornithologist goes comparatively seldom into the woods. Millions of birds have come up from the South, but the forest is still almost deserted. May, with its hosts of warblers, will bring a grand change in this respect; meanwhile the sparrows are in the ascendant, and we shall do well to follow the road for the most part, though with frequent excursions across fields and into gardens and orchards. Of eighty-four species of birds seen by me in April, a year ago, twenty-one were water birds, and of the remaining sixty-three, twenty, or almost one third, were members of the sparrow family, while only five were warblers. In May, on the other hand, out of one hundred and twenty-five species seen twenty-three were warblers, and only eighteen were sparrows. To represent the case fairly, however, the comparison should be by individuals rather than by species, and for such a comparison I have no adequate data. My own opinion is that of all the birds commonly seen in April, more than half, perhaps as many as four fifths, are members of the sparrow family. There are days, indeed, when the song sparrows alone seem to outnumber all other birds, and other days when the same is true of the snowbirds.
The large and noble sparrow family, which includes not only the sparrows, commonly so called, but finches, grosbeaks, crossbills, snowbirds, buntings, and the like, is represented in North America by more than ninety species, and in Massachusetts by about forty. It is preëminently a musical family, and, with us at least, April is the best month of the twelve in which to appreciate its lyrical efforts, notwithstanding the fact that one of its most distinguished songsters, the rose-breasted grosbeak, is still absent.
Among the more gifted of its April representatives are the fox sparrow,—so named from his color,—the purple finch, the song sparrow, the vesper sparrow, the tree sparrow, the field sparrow, and the white-throated sparrow—seven common birds, every one of them deserving to be known by any who care for sweet sounds.
One of the seven, the purple finch, also called the linnet, is unlike all the others, and easily excels them all in the fluency and copiousness of his music. He is readily distinguishable—in adult male plumage—as a sparrow whose head and neck appear to have been dipped in carmine ink, or perhaps in pokeberry juice. His song is a prolonged, rapid, unbroken warble, which he is much given to delivering while on the wing, hovering ecstatically and singing as if he would pour out his very soul. He is a familiar bird, a lover of orchards and roadside trees, but is not so universally distributed, probably, as most of the other species I have named.
In contrast with the purple finch, all the six sparrows here mentioned with him have brief and rather formal songs. Those of the fox sparrow and the tree sparrow bear a pretty strong resemblance to each other, especially as to cadence or inflection; the song sparrow’s and the vesper sparrow’s are still more closely alike, and will almost certainly confuse the novice, while those of the field sparrow and the white-throat are each quite unique.
The fox sparrow visits Massachusetts as a migrant only, and the same might be said of the white-throat, only that it breeds in Berkshire County and single birds are often seen in the eastern part of the State during the winter. The tree sparrow is a winter resident, going far north to rear its young, and the remaining four species are with us for the summer.