WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON. 203 



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, 



" 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 



