But with all its virtues, the chippy shows lamentable weakness of character in allowing its grown children to impose upon it, as it certainly does. In every group of these birds throughout the summer we can see young ones (which we may know by the black line-stripes on their breasts) hopping around after their parents, that are often no larger or more able-bodied than they, and teasing to be fed; drooping their wings to excite pity for a helplessness that they do not possess when the weary little mother hops away from them, and still persistently chirping for food until she weakly relents, returns to them, picks a seed from the ground and thrusts it down the bill of the sauciest teaser in the group. With two such broods in a season the chestnut feathers on the father's jaunty head might well turn gray.
Unlike most of the sparrows, the little chippy frequents high trees, where its nest is built quite as often as in the low bushes of the garden. The horsehair, which always lines the grassy cup that holds its greenish-blue, speckled eggs, is alone responsible for the name hair-bird, and not the chippy's hair-like trill, as some suppose.
English Sparrow
(Passer domesticus) Finch family
Called also: HOUSE SPARROW
Length—6.33 inches.
Male—Ashy above, with black and chestnut stripes on back and shoulders. Wings have chestnut and white bar, bordered by faint black line. Gray crown, bordered from the eye backward and on the nape by chestnut. Middle of throat and breast black. Underneath grayish white.
Female—Paler; wing-bars indistinct, and without the black marking on throat and breast.
Range—Around the world. Introduced and naturalized in America, Australia, New Zealand.
Migrations—Constant resident.
"Of course, no self-respecting ornithologist will condescend to enlarge his list by counting in the English sparrow—too pestiferous to mention," writes Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all bird neighbors is any one more within the scope of this book than the audacious little gamin that delights in the companionship of humans even in their most noisy city thoroughfares?