_ aay e 
ar 
= 
Plain; but he knows better than to waste the 
exhilarating air of this wild and frosty day in 
reminiscences of summer time. It is a pretty- 
sounding couplet, — 
WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON. 203 
** Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, 
No winter in thy year,” — 
but rather incongruous, he would think. Chick- 
adee, dee, he calls, — chickadee, dee ; and though 
the words have no exact equivalent in English, 
their meaning is felt by all such as are worthy 
to hear them. 
Are the smallest birds really the most cour- 
ageous, or does an unconscious sympathy on our 
part inevitably give them odds in the compari- 
son? Probably the latter supposition comes 
nearest the truth. When a sparrow chases a 
butcher-bird we cheer the sparrow, and then 
when a humming-bird puts to flight a sparrow, 
we cheer the humming-bird; we side with the 
kingbird against the crow, and with the vireo 
against the kingbird. It is a noble trait of 
human nature — though we are somewhat too 
ready to boast of it—that we like, as we say, 
to see the little fellow at the top. ‘These re- 
marks are made, not with any reference to the 
chickadee, — I admit no possibility of exagger- 
ation in his case,—but as leading to a men- 
tion of the golden-crested kinglet. He is the 
least of all our winter birds, and one of the most 
