The Chipping Sparrow, Spizella passerina, is a small sparrow.
Adults have a rusty cap, a dark bill and grey underparts. They have a tan back with dark stripes, brown wings with white bars and a slim tail. Their face is grey with a black line through the eye. They are similar in appearance to the American Tree Sparrow.
Their breeding habitat is wooded areas including suburban parks and farmland across most of North America. They usually nest in trees, coniferous or deciduous, or sometimes on the ground.
These birds forage on the ground or in low bushes, sometimes flying up to catch insects in flight. They mainly eat insects and seeds.
These birds usually travel in flocks outside of the breeding season. The song is a simple trill. Although this bird's original habitat was probably coniferous forest, it has adapted well to the changes brought about by increased human population in its range.
In the southeast, ChippingSparrows are common in open pine forests; in the northern and mountain states, they can be found in openings in the forest, along streams and lakes, in spruce bogs mountain meadows and in stands of jack or red pine.
ChippingSparrows typically raise two broods, sometimes three in the southern part of their range.
The song of the ChippingSparrow is a simple, dry trill, all on one pitch, so similar to that of both the Pine Warbler and Dark-eyed Junco that even the experienced observer can be fooled.
In the summer of 1956 Robert Galati found two chippingsparrow nests near the tops of fl spruce trees in a mature fl spruce bog in Itasca State Park--one was 56.5 feet from the ground in a 58.5-foot tree, the other at 54.5 feet in a 56-foot spruce.
At Lake Itasca in summer the chippingsparrows often fed by the doorsteps where the table cloths had been shaken, and it was supposed that it would be simple to trap them with bread crumbs or oatmeal as bait.
The chippingsparrow is numbered among those birds that have been observed sparring with their reflection in a pane of glass (Forbush, 1929).
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