PEEPERS AND CHEEPERS 125 



People. Then if a high wind is added to all this dis- 

 comfort their strength gives way, and they often die 

 in great numbers. 



" If people who own gardens and farms, where there 

 are no evergreen trees or hayricks for birds to hide 

 in, would put up each fall little shelters of brush and 

 branches, they would save a great many bird-lives, and 

 their orchards would be freer from insects in the spring. 

 But, Dodo, you are not painting the word-picture of the 

 Chickadee. Haven't you watched them long enough 

 to think it out? " 



" Y-e-s, I believe I have," said Dodo slowly. " I see 

 a dear little bird about as big as a Chippy Sparrow, 

 onl}^ fatter, and he is nice soft gray on top, about the 

 color of my chinchilla muff. He has a black cap on his 

 head, that comes down behind where his ears ought to 

 be, fastened with a wide black strap across his throat, 

 and his face is a very clean white, and his breast, too. 

 That is, it is white in the middle, but the sides and 

 below are a warmer color — sort of rusty white. And 

 that's all, except that he's as fidgety as ever he can 

 be," ended Dodo, quite out of breath with her haste to 

 tell all she could before the bird flew away. 



" Do you think you will remember the Chickadee, 

 while he is in the deep woods nesting this summer, so 

 that you will know him again in the autumn?" 



Dodo and Nat said they were quite sure they would, 

 but Rap said : '' I've known him ever so long, only the 

 miller called him a 'black-capped titmouse.' Isn't he 

 a relation of the Nuthatch, Doctor?" 



" Yes, a second cousin, and lUack-capped Titmouse is 

 one of his right names. They used to belong to the 



