380 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



ing for caterpillars, moths, beetles, and other insects with which to 

 feed its large and growing family. And in the winter it continues the 

 good work by prying into crevices in the bark and searching the 

 branches and twigs for hibernating insects, pupae, or egg clusters ; many 

 of the insects thus destroyed are among the worst enemies of the 

 conifers. 



Lucien M. Turner says in his Ungava notes : "It is not uncommon to 

 find their beaks covered with gum from the spruce and larch. I ac- 

 counted for it by supposing that during the summer months, when the 

 gum exudes plentifully and is so soft, many insects adhere to it, and 

 when winter comes the birds search for just such places to obtain the 

 insects." 



While visiting New England in fall and winter, and probably at other 

 seasons, this chickadee apparently feeds to some extent on various seeds ; 

 it comes occasionally to feeding stations and seems to be fond of fatty 

 foods. 



Horace W. Wright (1917) received a letter from Richard M. Marble, 

 of Woodstock, Vt., in which he states that an Acadian chickadee fed 

 at a feeding station from November well into January. Mr. Wright saw 

 some of these birds feeding frequently "upon stalks of golden rod and 

 aster"; and he quotes William Brewster as having seen them "pecking 

 at gray birch seed-cones." 



He (Wright, 1914) saw them "picking seeds on the ground" and 

 "picking at the green undeveloped berries of a red cedar." 



Behavior. — Judging from my limited experience with them on their 

 breeding grounds, I should say that Acadian chickadees are just as 

 tame and confiding as our little blackcaps; we had no trouble in watch- 

 ing them at short range, and they fed their nearly full-grown young 

 within a few feet of us. They are less active than our familiar chicka- 

 dees, more deliberate in their movements, and less noisy. They were 

 traveling about in small family parties. Some observers have referred 

 to it as shy, but others have found it almost tame enough to be caught 

 by hand. Oliver L. Austin, Jr. (1932), found that, in Labrador, 

 "while occupied with their nesting duties, they are very quiet and un- 

 obtrusive." He continues: 



They ke^p out of sight and are seldom noticed, even by one looking for them. 

 I had to hunt, and hunt persistently, to get three specimens at Sandwich Bay, 

 July 16. 1928. But the moment the young leave the nest, usually during the last 

 two weeks in July, the Chickadees alter their demeanor, and the woods suddenly 

 seem overrun with them. Small bands of young and old together, probably parents 

 with their broods, meander inquisitively through the spruce and larch forests amid 

 the clouds of mosquitoes and black flies. Their tameness, in contrast to their 

 previous reticence, is surprising. Their buzzing statements of facts greet you on 



