Stephen Robinson, age 13, of Longview, Wash., for his question:

WHICH BIRD FAMILY IS THE LARGEST?

Largest of all bird families is the finch family. There are about 1,200 species and subspecies. About 200 of the family members can be found living in the United States.

Each family member falls into one of four groups: finches, buntings, grosbeaks and sparrows. The original meaning of the Anglo Saxon word "finch" has bean lost, but bunting means "plump," "grosbeak" means "tick billed" and sparrow means "flutter."

Best known American birds of the finch group include the purple finch and the house finch. The purple finch is about nix inches long and has a splash of raspberry red. The house finch is often called a linnet. It has a red head and throat and brown back and tail feathers.

Snow bunting, indigo bunting and painted bunting are popular in the second grouping. All of these birds are famous for their colorful feathers. The snow bunting is white in winter but takes on streaks of brown in the summer. The male indigo bunting is deep blue while the female is olive brown and white. The painted bunting is a blend of blue, green and red.

The rose breasted grosbeak has been called the potato bug bird because of its good work for the farmer of the Mississippi Valley. Actually, it eats ail kinds of bugs. The male is about eight inches long.

Closely related to the grosbeak is the cardinal, regarded by many as an aristocrat among birds.

A few pairs of English sparrow were brought from Europe in 1850 and have since multiplied and spread nearly all over the United States. The correct name for this bird is the house sparrow. Many regard it as an unwelcome alien because it ants cherries, grapes, pears, peaches, lettuce and other vegetables.

The song sparrow is a native American and one of the best liked and bast known of all song birds.

The fox sparrow is one of the largest and best looking birds in the family. It is about seven inches long. It wasn't named because of its habits but because of its rich, tawny feathers that are streaked with alternating gray and brown    fox color, you could say. It has a sweet song and also sands out a series of short whistles going down the scale    The grasshopper sparrow is one of the smallest of all sparrows. It is only 4 1/2 inches long. This plump bird is sometimes called the quail sparrow. It is vary shy.

There are more than 40 kinds of sparrows in the United States alone, ranging from the Hanslow, Ipswitch, Nelson's, Savannah, lake sparrow and seaside sparrow.

Almost all of the sparrows can be counted as friends of man. First of all they have bright, cheerful songs. But most important of all, they are great insect catchers. Each year the sparrows save farmers millions of dollars worth of farm crops.