THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 159 



If you coDtinue to approach his hiding-place, which 

 is not difficult to find, he will perhaps begin to 

 scold or chaff by saying, Tsip^ peerr^ feerr^ peerr ! 

 and then if you do what he commands — that is, if 

 you peer — he will at length break out into a vo- 

 ciferous protest against your intrusion, as he hops 

 and tilts nervously among the branches. Tdch^ 

 tsick-a-tdt^ tsick-a-tdt-tdt-tdt ! he cries, sometimes 

 omitting the tsich^ at other times the tdt. It must 

 be remembered that the first part of this familiar 

 call of the chickadee is pitched on a very high key, 

 while the latter part — that is, the tdt or dd — 

 strikes an alto note much lower in the scale. 



While he is never a very musical bird, like many 

 of his fellow-tenants of the woods, the thrushes, 

 robins and some of the sparrows, yet I have sev- 

 eral times listened to him with rare delight as he 

 warbled a ditty, half-sad and half-glad, while flit- 

 ting nimbly from twig to twig. The fact is, he 

 has so large a repertory of notes that one can 

 never be certain that one has heard all the sounds 

 he is capable of pioducing. 



A great deal of his time is spent in securing a 

 livelihood, as is the case with most of his human 

 relatives, and he finds quite an extensive larder in 

 the woods. I often see him catching an insect on 



