Who does not know this humblest, most unassuming little neighbor that comes
hopping to our very doors; this mite of a bird with "one talent" that it so
persistently uses all the day and every day throughout the summer? Its high,
wiry trill, like the buzzing of the locust, heard in the dawn before the sky
grows even gray, or in the middle of the night, starts the morning chorus; and
after all other voices are hushed in the evening, its tremolo is the last
bed-song to come from the trees. But however monotonous such cheerfulness
sometimes becomes when we are surfeited with real songs from dozens of other
throats, there are long periods of midsummer silence that it punctuates most
acceptably.
Its call-note, chip! chip! from which several of its popular names are
derived, is altogether different from the trill which must do duty as a song
to express love, contentment, everything that so amiable a little nature might
feel impelled to voice.
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.
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