A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 

 Official Organ of The Audubon Societies ^ 



Vol. XI March— April, 1909 No. 2 



Chickadee All the Year Round 



By MARY C. DICKERSON 



With photographs by the author 



HE was only a small gray Chickadee who had found a grain of corn, but 

 had dropped it in the snow as he was flying on his way to the woods. 

 He stopped, hovered in air, then settled lightly beside the hole in the 

 snow where the corn had disappeared. He looked down into the hole and thrust 

 in his bill. But his efforts to get the corn only pushed it deeper in; at least, down 

 Chickadee slowly went — snow over head, shoulders, back and wings— till he 

 was standing on his head, his tail alone showing and that pointing directly to the 

 sky. Then he appeared again vigorously scattering the snow and shaking his 

 feathers. He had the corn! and with a flutter of wings, a rise and a dip, he was 

 off to the woods in an oblique course against the wind. 



Chickadee is a very little fellow! He looks small beside all the other winter 

 birds, except the Kinglets; and the fact is, he is smaller than he looks, a tiny 

 body hidden in fluffed gray feathers. You could close your hand over him and 

 leave only his tail extending — except that he would hammer and bite with the 

 same vigor that he shows in everything he does. The downy feathers on his 

 breast are more than half an inch long, while the equally downy ones on his 

 sides and back lack little of an inch. Besides, the colder the day, the more Chicka- 

 dee fluffs his feathers till he looks like an animated bundle of down, very round, 

 with the tail dropping off behind. 



Sometimes his " chick-a-dee-dee " sounds with an anxious ring when the 

 snow is falling and the dusk has come. Facing the wind and with tail straight 

 out in air, he hammers his small black bill into a decaying branch. See the chips 

 fly and hear the "rat-tat-tat-at-at." At last he drags out some small morsel 

 from the hole he has made. In these difficult days he is glad to examine even the 

 hickor\-nut shells left on the stone wall by some red squirrel. He holds each 

 shell down with his feet while he pounds his bill into its crevices searching out 

 tasty fragments. Sometimes for several winter days together he can find no water 

 and must eat snow instead. Again, even the snow has a hard crust and he must 

 do much hammering to get small bits of ice. 



