70 CHICKADEE 



paratively few of the worms and caterpillars were 

 to be found there." Mr. Forbush concludes that 

 birds that eat insect eggs are most valuable to 

 the farmer, as Ihey feed almost entirely on inju- 

 rious insects and their eggs, and are present all 

 winter when other birds are absent. The bill 

 of the Chickadee — a sharply pointed 

 ^:--4 Q^ little pick — is admirably suited to 

 ^^ this work of excavating for eggs and 



Fig. 31. grubs hidden under the bark. It also 

 Bill of makes a good carjienter's tool, and one 

 Cliickadee. ^^^^^ -^ j^^^^^j^ needed ; for when the 



Chickadee cannot find an old Woodj^ecker's hole 

 to rent, he has to go to work to tunnel out a nest 

 for himself. Maynard says that in excavating the 

 birds carry the pieces of w^ood some distance away 

 before dropping them, and that when they build in 

 decayed wood " they are often obliged to abandon 

 a nearly finished domicile on account of dampness 

 which is caused by the water that is absorbed by 

 the punky wood during wet weather." On the 

 Hudson, Doctor Mearns has found them lining 

 their nests with cotton}^ fuzz from the stems of tall 

 ferns in a swamp. He says they began at the bot- 

 tom of the fern stems and climbed up, " gleaning 

 to the very tops, which often bent dow^n under their 

 weight until they touched the water, when they 

 flew to another plant." In this w\ay they gleaned 

 among the ferns until the}^ had accumulated bun- 

 dles of fern-down as large as hickory nuts. 



