CHICK, D.D. 



to bring food to his mate when she took her turn. 



In eleven or twelve days from the time the eggs were 

 laid, there were ten birds in that home instead of two. 

 The fortnight that followed was too busy for song. 

 Chick and his mate looked the orchard over even more 

 thoroughly than the Farmer Boy did; and before those 

 eight hungry babies of theirs were ready to leave the 

 nest, it began to seem as if Chick had eaten too many 

 insect eggs in the spring, there were so few caterpillars 

 hatching out. But the fewer there were, the harder they 

 hunted; and the harder they hunted, the scarcer became 

 the caterpillars. So when Dee, Chee, Fee, Wee, Lee, 

 Bee, Mee, and Zee were two w^eeks old, and came out of 

 the hollow post to seek their own living, the whole fam- 

 ily had to take to the birches until a new crop of insect 

 eggs had been laid in the orchard. This was no hardship. 

 It only added the zest of travel and adventure to the 

 pleasure of the days. Besides, it is n't just orchards that 

 Chick, D.D. and his kind take care of. It is forests and 

 shade-trees, too. 



Hither and yon they hopped and flitted, picking the 

 weevils out of the dead tips of the growing pine trees, 

 serving the beech trees such a good turn that the beech- 

 nut crop was the heavier for their visit, doing a bit for 

 the maple-sugar trees, and so on through the woodland. 



Not only did they mount midget guard over the 



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