328 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NAIIONAL MUSEUM 



like to draw near hunters' cabins at all times of the year, but particularly 

 during the hunting seasons. They arrive within a stone's throw of 

 the shelters, and will inspect and peck at animal hides, fatty substances 

 thrown out from the table, or even entrails of animal carcasses." 



Lewis O. Shelley (1926) writes of a curious and evidently unusual 

 habit that he noticed on a warm day in February. He says: "Flying 

 from the piazza, a Chickadee lit in front of a hive. When a bee came 

 out it snapped it up, flew into an elm, and, holding the bee in its foot, 

 picked it to pieces and ate it. I was alarmed for fear the Chickadee 

 would be stung, but it seemed not, for the act was performed again. 

 Neither was it always the same bird that flew down and got a bee, but 

 many different ones." 



J. Kenneth Terres (1940) reports seeing a chickadee eating tiny 

 tent caterpillars, too small to be detected in a stomach contents. He 

 says: "On the morning of April 23, 1938, I again observed at close 

 range the destruction of these caterpillars, this time by a Black-capped 

 Chickadee, Penthestes atricapillus atricapillus, in a brush-grown field in 

 Broome County, near Nanticoke, New York. When first seen, the 

 chickadee was busily engaged in visiting a number of the newly started 

 nests of the American tent caterpillar located in a nearby wild-apple 

 tree. Mains pumila. Using an eight-power binocular at twenty feet, 

 I observed the chickadee closely while it visited three caterpillar nests 

 in succession. It would first tear open the web, then pick up the small 

 worms (on this date about three-eighths of an inch long and a sixteenth 

 of an inch in diameter) and devour them rapidly." 



Behavior. — When chickadees visit our feeding shelves what impresses 

 us most is their quickness. They flit in rather slowly to be sure, for 

 so small a bird, and land on the shelf with a thud, often upright, grasping 

 the edge with their strong little claws and then jerking about with 

 such rapidity that the eye can scarcely take in their flashlike move- 

 ments. When alarmed they disappear as if by magic — we see only 

 the place where they were — an ability that must save them many times 

 from the strike of a bird of prey. 



Another chickadee propensity is the assumption of odd attitudes; 

 they often alight up-side-down on the under side of a branch, making, 

 it seems, almost a back somersault as they reach upward to grasp it; 

 and they can hang, back to the ground, steady and sec.ure, from the 

 tip of a swaying branch. Edward H. Forbush (1907) describes thus 

 some of the chickadee's acrobatic tricks : 



I once saw a Chickadee aUempting to hold a monster caterpillar, which proved 

 too strong for it. The great worm writhed out of the confining grasp and fell 

 to the ground, but the little bird followed, caught it, whipped it over a twig, and, 

 swinging underneath, caught each end of the caterpillar with a foot, and so held 



