70 WINTER 



delay them for a single billful. It was not hard dig- 

 ging, but it was very slow, for Chickadee is neither 

 carpenter nor mason. He has difficulty killing a 

 hard-backed beetle. So, whenever you find him oc- 

 cupying a clean-walled cavity, with a neat, freshly 

 chipped doorway, you may be sure that some wood- 

 pecker built the house, and not this short-billed, 

 soft-tailed little tit. Chickadee lacks both the bill 

 chisel and the tail brace. Perhaps the explanation of 

 his fondness for birch trees lies here because the 

 birch trees die young and soon decay! 



The birds were going down through the broken-off 

 top, and not by a hole through the leathery rind of 

 the sides, for the bark was too tough for their beaks. 

 They would drop into the top of the stub, pick up 

 a wad of decayed wood and fly off to a dead limb 

 of the pine. Here, with a jerk and a snap of their 

 bills, they would scatter the punk in a shower so thin 

 and far that I could neither hear it fall nor find a 

 trace of it upon the dead leaves of the ground. This 

 nest would never be betrayed by the workmen's chips, 

 as are the woodpeckers' nest-holes. 



Between the pair there averaged three beakf uls 

 of excavating every two minutes, one of the birds 

 regularly shoveling twice to the other's once. They 

 looked so exactly alike that I could not tell which 

 bird was pushing the enterprise ; but I had my sus- 

 picions. It was Mrs. Chickadee ! 



Mr. Chickadee was doing only part of his duty, 



