CHICKADEE 



67 



The abundant summer, the lean and wolfish 

 r, find Chickadee cheerful and gentle. He is 

 at some seasons than at others, with fewer 

 A for friendship. He almost disappears in the early 

 ^-summer. But this is because of family cares ; and 

 because the bigger, louder birds have come back, 

 JiWand the big leaves have come out and hidden him. 

 A little searching, and you will discover him, in one 

 of your old decayed fence-posts, maybe, or else deep 

 in the swamp, foraging for a family of from six to 

 . eight, that fairly bulge and boil over from the door 

 >f their home. 



Here about Mullein Hill, this is sure to be a 

 'ray-birch home. Other trees will do on a pinch. 

 I have found Chickadee nesting in live white oaks, 

 laples, upturned roots, and tumbling fence-posts. 

 These were shifts, only, mere houses, not real homes. 

 v >The only good homelike trees are old gray birches, 

 lead these many years and gone to punk mere 

 -shells of tough circular bark walls. Halfway down 

 the hill is a small grove of these birches that we call 

 le Seminary (because, as a poet friend says, " they 

 look like seminary girls in white frocks "). Here the 

 chickadees love to build. 



Why has Chickadee this very decided preference? 

 Is it a case of protective coloration the little gray 

 and black bird choosing to nest in this little gray and 

 , black tree because bird and tree so exactly match 

 one another in size and color? Or is there a strain 



