Taken near Chelan. Photo by the Author.
“FOUR OF THE CUTEST——.”
Eggs are laid during the first or second week of May in the vicinity of American Lake and from one to three weeks earlier in the sage country. They are among the most familiar objects in Nature, and particular description of them ought to be unnecessary. But every person who knows that we are interested in birds has to stop us on the street to tell about the “cunningest little nest, you know, with four of the cutest——” “Hold on,” we say; “were the eggs blue?” “Yes,” “With dots on them?” “Why, yes; how did you know?”
Incubation lasts only ten days and two broods are raised in each season. Chipping Sparrows are very devoted parents and the sitting female will sometimes allow herself to be taken in the hand. The male bird is not less sedulous in the care of the young, and he sometimes exercises a fatherly oversight of the first batch of babies, while his mate is preparing for the June crop.
No. 51.
BREWER’S SPARROW.
A. O. U. No. 562. Spizella breweri Cassin.
Description.—Adults: Upperparts grayish brown, brightest brown on back, everywhere (save on remiges and rectrices) streaked with black or dusky, narrowly on crown, more broadly on back and scapulars, less distinctly on rump; wing-coverts and tertials varied by edgings of brownish buff; flight-feathers and rectrices dark grayish brown or dusky with some edging of light grayish brown; a broad pale buffy superciliary stripe scarcely contrasting with surroundings; underparts dull whitish tinged on sides and across breast by pale buffy gray. Bill pale brown darkening on tip and along culmen; feet pale brown, iris brown. Young birds are less conspicuously streaked above; middle and greater coverts broadly tipped with buffy forming two distinct bands; breast streaked with dusky. Length 5.30 (1.35); wing 2.44 (62); tail 2.38 (60.5); bill .38 (8.8); tarsus .68 (17.4).
Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; general streaked appearance; absence of distinguishing marks practically distinctive; sage-haunting habits.
Nesting.—Nest: of small twigs and dried grasses, lined with horse-hair, set loosely in sage-bush. Eggs: 4 or 5, greenish blue, dotted and spotted, sometimes in ring about larger end, with reddish brown. Av. size .67 × .49 (17 × 12.4). Season: April, June; two broods.
General Range.—Sage-brush plains of the West, breeding from Arizona to British Columbia and east to western Nebraska and western Texas; south in winter to Mexico and Lower California.
Range in Washington.—Open country of the East-side, abundant summer resident; occasionally invades Cascade Mountains (only in late summer?).
Migrations.—Spring: Yakima March 29, 1900.
Authorities.—[“Brewer’s sparrow,” Johnson, Rep. Gov. W. T. 1884 (1885), 22]. Dawson, Auk, XIV, 1897, 178. D². Ss¹. Ss².
Specimens.—U. of W. P. C.
It is never quite fair to say that Nature produces a creature which harmonizes perfectly with its surroundings, for the moment we yield tribute of admiration to one creature, we discover amid the same circumstances another as nearly perfect but entirely different. When we consider the Sage Sparrow we think that Nature cannot improve much upon his soft grays by way of fitness for his desert environment; but when we come upon the Brewer Sparrow, we are ready to wager that here the dame has done her utmost to produce a bird of non-committal appearance. Mere brown might have been conspicuous by default, but brownish, broken up by hazy streakings of other brownish or dusky—call it what you will—has given us a bird which, so far as plumage is concerned, may be said to have no mark of distinction whatever—just bird.
Taken in Douglas County. Photo by the Author.
NEST AND EGGS OF BREWER SPARROW.
The Sage Sparrow fits into the gray-green massy scheme of color harmony in the artemisia, while Brewer’s fits into the somber, brown-and-streaky scheme of its twigs and branches. To carry out the comparison, do not look for breweri early in the season, when the breath of the rain rises from the ground and the air is astir: he is there, of course, but disregard him. Wait, rather, until the season is advanced, when the incomparable sun of Yakima has filled the sage-brush full to overflowing, and it begins to ooze out heat in drowsy, indolent waves. Then listen: Weeeezzz, tubitubitubitubitub, the first part an inspired trill, and the remainder an exquisitely modulated expirated trill in descending cadence. Instantly one conceives a great respect for this plain dot in feathers, whose very existence may have passed unnoticed before. The descending strain of the common song has, in some individuals, all the fine shading heard in certain imported canaries. Pitch is conceded by infinitesimal gradations, whereby the singer, from some heaven of fancy, brings us down gently to a topmost twig of earthly attainment. Nor does the song in other forms lack variety. In fact, a midday chorus of Brewer Sparrows is a treat which makes a tramp in the sage memorable.
Brewer’s Sparrow is of the sage sagey, and its range in Washington is almost exactly co-extensive with the distribution of that doughty shrub; but it is of record that Spizella breweri indulges in some romantic vacations, a specimen being once taken by me (July 25, 1900) at 8000 feet, upon the glacier levels of Wright’s Peak.