ACADIAN CHICKADEE 381 



all sides. They seem to follow you about. Hunting industriously for aphids, they 

 explore every nook and cranny of the larch branch within two feet of your face. 

 Perched upside down, rightside up, in all manner of conceivable and inconceivable 

 attitudes, tiiey regard you perkily with their bright beady eyes, burst suddenly 

 into their commonplace atser-day-day-day, and flutter past your ear to tlie next 

 promising branch. At this season you could almost catch them with a butterfly net. 



VV. J. Brown tells me of an usually tame Acadian chickadee that he 

 saw. An old trapper had a nest of this bird about 15 feet from his 

 back door in a natural cavity in a balsam fir. He had tacked a small 

 branch directly under the entrance hole for a perch. When he tapped 

 the side of the hole the chickadee came out and alighted on his hand 

 to be fed. The man said that he had fed the bird in this way several 

 times a day for the past ten days and that it would perch on any finger 

 held out to it. 



Acadian chickadees may usually flock by themselves, especially in 

 their summer haunts, but they are often seen to join the merry little 

 winter parties of black-capped chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, and 

 small woodpeckers that roam through the woods at that season. Wil- 

 liam Brewster (1938) watched such a gathering at Lake Umbagog in 

 January. He says of the behavior of the Acadians: "For a time they 

 kept higli up in the tops of some tall balsams working among the cones, 

 apparently extracting and eating the seeds. The Nuthatch was with 

 them here for several minutes, but the Black-cap chickadees remained 

 lower down. The Hudsonians differed from the Black-caps as follows: 

 — they were much less noisy (often passing minutes at a time in ab- 

 solute silence); they seldom hung head downward; they hopped and 

 flitted among the branches more actively and ceaselessly, spending less 

 time in one place ; their shorter tails were less in evidence ; they flirted 

 their wings much more with a more nervous, tremulous motion very 

 like that of Kinglets." 



Mr. Wright (1917) noted that "Golden-crowned Kinglets have 

 proved to be the closest companions of these Northern Chickadees on 

 many occasions. Indeed, they seem to be their natural associates. 

 Black-capped Chickadees are rather their incidental companions, with 

 whom they occasionally come in touch, but do not habitually move." 



Voice. — My impression of the ordinary note of the Acadian chickadee 

 was that it resembled the corresponding note of the black-capped chicka- 

 dee, but it was easily recognizable as not so sharp, clear, or lively as 

 that of our more familiar bird ; it was fainter, more lisping, hoarser, 

 and more nasal ; I wrote it in my notes as chicka-deer-deer, or chicka- 

 deer. But I like Mr. Austin's rendering, atser-day-day-day, as quoted 

 above. 



