One of the smallest of the sparrow family, Chippy, has a rufous cap. If you love nature study, you may come across the word “rufous” often because so many animals are labeled by this descriptive term.
Rufous means reddish brown in color. It can be a really helpful descriptor to keep in mind when you are trying to identify different sparrows. For the Chipping Sparrow, it’s easier to remember “rufous cap” than “reddish brown cap”.
Here is our gathering for this Rufous Capped Chippy:
Speaking of Sparrow Identification, at the end of our Burgess Sparrows, I’ll be gleaning some helpful tips for identifying sparrows in the field, but until then allaboutbirds.org points out:
“The Chipping Sparrow is a slender, fairly long-tailed sparrow with a medium-sized bill that is a bit small for a sparrow. Learning the shape of this classic Spizella sparrow is a key step in mastering sparrow identification.”
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Chipping_Sparrow/id
In The Burgess Bird Book, Chippy tells Peter Rabbit and Johnny Chuck that they line their nest with “long hair from the tail or mane of a horse… it makes the very nicest kind of lining for a nest.” (Burgess Birds, Thornton W. Burgess, p. 17). I would be so interested to see this myself!
Because it is so helpful for bird identification, here is the Chipping Sparrow’s song: Go Trail’s Chipping Sparrow call on Youtube
Until next time, keep birding <3 Kate
For our Burgess Bird Identification Pages, check here:
