146 SINGING BIRDS. 



CHICKADEE. 



PaRUS ATRICAPILLUS. 



Char. Above, ashy gray ; below, grayish white ; flanks buffy ; crown 

 and throat black ; cheek white. Length 4^ to 5^^ inches. 



Nest. In a cavity made in a decayed stump, entering from the top or 

 side ; composed of wool or inner fur of small mammals firmly and 

 compactly felted. Sometimes moss and hair are used, and a lining of 

 feathers. 



Eggs. 5-8 ; white speckled with reddish brown , 0.60 X 0.50. 



This familiar, hardy, and restless little bird chiefly inhabits 

 the Northern and Middle States as well as Canada, in which it 

 is even resident in winter around Hudson's Bay, and has been 

 met with at 62° on the northwest coast. In all the Northern 

 and Middle States, during autumn and winter, families of these 

 birds are seen chattering and roving through the woods, busily 

 engaged in gleaning their multifarious food, along with Nut- 

 hatches and Creepers, the whole forming a busy, active, and 

 noisy group, whose manners, food, and habits bring them 

 together in a common pursuit. Their diet varies with the 

 season ; for besides insects, their larvae and eggs, of which they 

 are more particularly fond, in the month of September they 

 leave the woods and assemble familiarly in our orchards and 

 gardens, and even enter the thronging cities in quest of that 

 support which their native forests now deny them. Large 

 seeds of many kinds, particularly those which are oily, as the 

 sunflower and pine and spruce kernels, are now sought after. 

 These seeds, in the usual manner of the genus, are seized in 

 the claws and held against the branch until picked open by the 

 bill to obtain their contents. Fat of various kinds is also 

 greedily eaten, and they regularly watch the retreat of the hog- 

 killers in the country, to glean up the fragments of meat which 

 adhere to the places where the carcases have been suspended. 

 At times they feed upon the wax of the candle-berry myrtle 

 {^Myrica cei'ifei'd) ; they likewise pick up crumbs near the houses, 

 and search the weather-boards, and even the window-sills, 



