Identifier: birdsnatureinnat02chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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thoughtful and very gentle. Many persons did not notice her,but those who did always spoke kindly of her. This is one of the birds that has greatly increased since white men settledthe country, for the cultivation of fields and gardens has furnished it just theproper amount of protection, and an abundance of the right kind of food. The trees and bushes that men plant in orchards and on their lawns pro-vide splendid places for the chipping sparrow to build its nest. The cradle for the babies is a very dainty structure. It is made of drygrasses, with a few small twigs to strengthen and support it. In the center ofthis one will find a smooth cup lined deeply with horsehair, where four orfive pale blue or greenish eggs are laid. Scattered about over the surface ofthe shell, but particularly numerous around the larger end, is a sprinkling ofblack or brownish spots. A variety of situations is chosen, so that we mayfind a nest near the end of a swaying bough or saddled among the twigs of 366
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4.^2 CHIPPING SPARROW.About Life-size. COPYRIGHT 1»01, BY - RO, CHICAGO a lower branch of a shade tree by the street. Often, the birds choose cedarbushes or other thick shrubs, and in such cases the nest may be only three orfour feet from the ground. I recall one pair that built their home in a clematis vine, which grewon the veranda-trellis. Here, day by day, we used to watch the parent-birdsbring food to their little ones, and it is astonishing how much labor it requiresto keep four baby chipping sparrows supplied with all the food they willeat. Every two or three minutes one of the parents would flit into the clematisvine with food for the young. So far as we could tell, it appeared that themale attended to the duties of caring for the young fully as much as did hismate. This, truly, is the correct way to do; but not all father-birds followthis custom. One of the little chipping sparrows seemed to be stronger than the others,and usually raised his head a little higher than his bro

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