CHICKADEE 



69 



were building their house upon the sand ! Any crea- 

 ture without wings 

 would have known 

 that. The birds, how- 

 ever, because they 

 have wings, seem to 

 have lost the sense of 

 such insecurity, often 

 placing their nests as 

 if they expected the 

 nests themselves to 

 take wings and fly to 

 safety when the rains 

 descend and the winds 

 come. 



This shaking stub 

 of the chickadees was standing directly beneath a 

 great overshadowing pine, where, if no partridge 

 bumped into it, if two squirrels did not scamper up 

 it together, if the crows nesting overhead in the pine 

 did not discover it, if no strong wind bore down upon 

 it from the meadow side, it might totter out the 

 nesting-season. But it didn't. The birds were leav- 

 ing too much to luck. I knew it, and perhaps I 

 should have pushed their card house down, then 

 and there, and saved the greater ruin later. Perhaps 

 so, but who was I to interfere in their labor? 



Both birds were at the work when I discovered 

 them, and so busily at it that my coming up did not 



