CHICKADEE 67 



The abundant summer, the lean and wolfish win- 

 ter, find Chickadee cheerful and gentle. He is busier 

 at some seasons than at others, with fewer chances 

 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, 

 and 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, inaybe, or else deep 

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

 eight, that fairly bulge and boil over from the door 

 of their home. 



Here about Mullein Hill, this is sure to be a 

 gray-birch home. Other trees will do on a pinch. 

 I have found Chickadee nesting in live white oaks, 

 maples, upturned roots, and tumbling fence-posts. 

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

 The only good homelike trees are old gray birches, 

 dead 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 

 the 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 



