54 Bird Comrades 



tits did not display acuteness in the selection of nesting 

 sites. A cosy hollow in a dead snag or stump is especially 

 acceptable. Sometimes it is a deserted woodpecker's 

 cavity made trig and clean, while quite often, when the 

 wood is soft enough, the tits themselves chisel out a little 

 hole in a tree or stump or fence post. I recall having 

 once watched a pair of chickadees hollowing the upper 

 end of a truncated sassafras tree that was half decayed. 

 They would fly into the cavity, pick off a chip, dash out 

 and away a rod or two, drop the fragment, then dart back 

 to the hollow for another piece. In this way the busy 

 couple worked hour by hour without resting for an instant. 

 Their reason no doubt 'for carrying the chips some distance 

 away from their nest was that they did not want any 

 telltale fragments to betray their secret to their enemies. 

 It would be impossible to tell how many chickadee 

 nests I have found in all the years of my bird study. 

 One of them was in an old stump near a path along which 

 I was sauntering. My attention was attracted by the lit- 

 tle husband's flying from the stump and calling nervously, 

 thus unwittingly ".giving away " his secret. Had he been 

 quiet, my suspicions would not have been aroused; but 

 many birds, like a few people here and there, find it very 

 hard to keep a secret. And this, by the way, is one of 

 the strangest things about Nature that she has not 

 taught her feathered children to go with, apparent uncon- 

 cern about their employment when a nest is near, but 

 impels them to chirp and flit about in such a way as to 

 excite the suspicion of an enemy. 



