£be Warbler 123 



set-up camera sat staring her home so rudely in the face. And this attitude 

 seems generic with these Chickadees. 



The Rocky Mountain Nuthatch and the Chickadee occupying about 

 the same sorts of locality in Wyoming for their nesting, one naturally falls 

 to making comparisons between un-allied species that are yet so compan- 

 ionable during almost the yearly gamut of their little day. The Nuthatch 

 husband is a most tender and bountiful provider for his mate during the 

 halcyon days of her confinement. The nesting sites are thus easily betrayed 

 (to the initiate, of course). But this sort of gallantry seems rather rare with 

 the Chickadee. Indeed I have seen but a single example of it. This hap- 

 pened thus: 



A Nuthatch was seen to feed his mate in a broad canyon, their where- 

 abouts having been betrayed by their noisy junketing. The male was all 

 attention and every circumstance but three bespoke a nesting place near by. 

 But that female — like some females of human identity — led her ardent human 

 admirer a merry race. Never a Nuthatch so utterly arbitrary and erratic in 

 her manner. Giving every evidence to one skilled in Nuthatch ways of be- 

 ing just about to seek her incubated eggs, she yet led one back and forth, 

 and up and down, through steep gorges and over threatening masses of talus, 

 and all without result. With her adoring mate the Nuthatch had just gone 

 back down the slopes and tarried for a moment where I heard her first, 

 when suddenly the faint " Be-wary " of a Chickadee reached my ears. In- 

 stantly eye followed ear to see, in one brief moment, a male Chickadee perch- 

 ing on the lowest limb of a great bull pine at the edge of a little gorge, with 

 a good-sized "worm" in tow. In a surprisingly brief time the kittle 

 faithful flitted to a large stump on the steep edge of the opposite side of the 

 "draw " and disappeared into the hidden side of the stump. 



Strange coincidences happen at times. But a few days before I had 

 been fairly astounded by having genial Mr. Dille, of Denver, coolly refuse 

 an inviting set of the Long-tailed Chickadee, though new to his cabinet. 

 He " wanted no set of less than eight eggs, nor did he care for a set which 

 should look, as did many sets of Mountain Chickadee, as if two or three fe- 

 males had taken a turn at starting a family in the same nest." 



Now, this was rather abashing, since most sets of the Long-tail show 

 wide variations in shape and coloration within the same sets, while as for 

 the nests found by the writer none had ever contained more than seven eggs. 

 And so, all the weary way of that long Nuthatch chase, I was pondering 

 polite phrases to assure my very particular friend that his quest for a set of 

 eight eggs of Pants septentrionalis was destined to be fruitless ever. Im- 

 agine, then, my surprise on climbing that steep bank to the Chickadee stump 

 to find therein a set of eight eggs. Moreover, not only was the set so rare 

 in point of number, but the markings were remarkably uniform and of a deli- 

 cacy I had never seen before. 



