A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 197 



It would be difficult, however, to speak in too 

 laudatory a strain of that feathered sprite, the 

 black-capped chickadee. What a perfect little 

 gentleman he is, any way, even when he hangs 

 liead-downward from a twig, or turns a somersault 

 in pursuit of an insect ! How neat and winsome 

 he looks with his black cap and necktie ! Here he 

 is before me now, flitting about in a brush-heap, 

 pecking here and pecking there, peeping here and 

 peeping there, until at last he leisurely draws the 

 larva of an insect, white and fuzzy, from its nest 

 beneath the bark of a limb, and then, after several 

 attempts, swallows it, looking up at me with a 

 courteous little nod, as much as to say : " It was 

 good, sir ; I should have been glad to share it with 

 you, if I hadn't been so hungry myself ! " Of 

 course I reply with equal urbanity : '* Thank you, 

 Master Tomtit ; you are quite welcome to all of 

 it ; I'm not in the least insectivorous in my tastes." 

 I will not be outdone in good manners by a chick- 

 adee, no, indeed ! 



Then he makes a sudden plunge to a sapling 

 close at hand, and alights " head downward, cling- 

 ing to a spray," as Emerson says, and calls cliick- 

 cldck-a-dee-dee^ with a chuckle of exultation. He 

 is such a dear little elf, so brave and so ingenu- 



