Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/231

 as far away from it as he is able, and, if it is late afternoon, will beguile you with his simple song, from no more ambitious perch than a fence rail. The migrant flocks come to us before or during the spring moult, and are not then in full song; and when they leave, in October, they are quite voiceless.

 Grasshopper Sparrow: Ammodramus savannarum passerinus.

Yellow-winged Sparrow.


 * Length:
 * 4.80 inches.


 * Male and Female:
 * Line over the eye, centre of crown, lesser wing coverts, and shoulders yellow. Above red-brown with an ash-gray wash; upper breast brownish drab; belly whitish; bill stout and short, dark above, pale below; tail feathers edged with white; feet dark.


 * Song: 
 * Note like a grasshopper's chirp; song somewhat resembling the Chipping Sparrow's, but in a different key.


 * Season:
 * Common summer resident.


 * Breeds:
 * Throughout its United States range.


 * Nest:
 * Like the Vesper Sparrow's, on the ground.


 * Eggs:
 * Sparkling white, with spots and flecks of red and brown.

Range:
 * Eastern United States and southern Canada to the Plains, south to Florida, Cuba, Porto Rico, and coast of Central America.

If you search for a Sparrow with yellow wings, as one of its names suggests, you will altogether miss this species. But if you look for a plain bird, with yellowish stripes on the crown and over the eyes, lesser wing coverts dull yellow, and bend of the wing bright yellow, who runs elusively through the grass, giving a shrill, grasshopper chirp, you will easily locate the Grasshopper Sparrow. The Sparrows and the Warblers will be inevitable stumbling-blocks to you; and when you have positively named half a dozen species, and guessed at as many more, you will feel that you have conquered ornithology. This particular Sparrow keeps so persistently to the ground and to low bushes, in