£be Marbler 



119 



" stubs " for its nesting. But it is clearly one of the commonest of bird par- 

 adoxes that the most robust of the Black-caps should choose, as a rule, the 

 most rotten of sites for the digging, therein, of his nursery. This prefer- 

 ence would seem so marked as to appear, at least, a matter of common and 

 deliberate choice. And this choice is the more striking since, in the main, 

 it takes the Chickadee fairly well out of his feeding ground at times: (a 

 grave condition, when the family numbers, six, — seven, — eight f) 



During autumn, winter and early-spring days, the Long-tailed Chick- 

 adee is found very commonly along the canyons, where willow, cotton-wood 



HOME OF THE LONG-TAILED CHICKADEE 



and box-elder stubs and stumps are very common. Herein one who searches 

 with acquired skill may find in plenty the shallow excavations which serve 

 to fend the sharper blasts and the fiercer wets of fall and winter days. But 

 with the coming of May the main body of the scattered troops of Chicka- 

 dees become measurably strangers to the canyons (except for feeding 

 hours), and betake themselves to the shrubless, weedless and grassless 

 margins of the shale hills. 



Hereon grow scatteringly a few primeval bull-pines; most fascinating- 

 ly picturesque in their gnarled and writhy and pigmied outlines. But here 



