£be Marbler 121 



amount of labor thus entailed is nothing short of enormous. In view of 

 this fact one is not surprised to note that during the days preceding the 

 takino- up of her titanic task, the female Chickadee is unusually droopy, 

 silent and still. (This semi-lethargy seems also to maintain during a short 

 period before egg-deposition begins.) 



It seems likely that old cavities are seldom re-used; chiefly, one may pre- 

 sume, because they are likely, as a rule, to prove too much decayed for use. 

 But one re-occupied cavity has actually been observed, that one being the 

 very first domicile of this Chickadee ever observed in nascent occupancy. 



This cavity, in a small stump, on a steep side-hill, among primeval 

 bull-pines, was silently being inspected, within and without, on the fourth 

 of May, by a pair of the Chickadees. The observing mortal was careful not 

 to approach the spot for several days, the pair of birds being very evidently 

 just at house-hunting. 



A week later the locality was found deserted of all birds. A probing 

 stick brought up no fur; and it was supposed that the site had failed to suit. 

 But on the seventeenth of May, two weeks after the first inspection, a care- 

 ful observation showed a snug bed of fur. Yet still, — no birds about. On 

 May 26 examination showed unchanged conditions: a flat mat of fur in the 

 bottom of the cavity and no birds in sight, — or even in hearing. Half-skep- 

 tically the mat was divided in the middle. Beneath it lay, as the searcher 

 more than half expected, the carelessly-moulded hair nest and the six eggs 

 which appear to make up the normal set of the eggs of the Long-tailed 



Chickadee. , 



This absenteeism, from eggs not yet incubated, seems characteristic of 

 this race. Other nests, observed under similar conditions, have showed 

 similar results. Moreover, on the whole the Long-tail is by no means as ex- 

 citable and solicitous at the occupied nest as his near relatives are wont to 

 be. 



The task of removing from two quarts to four of barley-corn-sized bits 

 of rotten wood, one at a time, to some distance from the chosen nesting site, 

 involves, of course, a marked prolongation of the nesting time. In the two 

 observed instances wherein the period could be accurately determined the 

 time of excavation and fur-gathering would seem to have covered about two 

 weeks. 



On May sixth, near the close of a fruitless day of canyon climbing, the 

 writer heard faintly the " Be — wary " of a Chickadee, half-way up the can- 

 yon-side. Climbing wearily up the student found his soul refreshed, in an 

 instant, by the sight of the nodding tail of a Chickadee whose body was 

 half-hidden within a rather smoothly rounded cavity begun in an eight-inch 

 dead bull-pine. On May 29th, three weeks later, a mat of fur lay at the bottom 

 of the rather small and irregular cavity begun some twenty- four days before. 



