head and cardinal at his throat. The 

 female has a white throat and cardinal 

 or black cap. I have noticed one with 

 a cardinal cap that had little black 

 feathers sticking here and there like an 

 emery bag. They are very full of fun, 

 even riotous in play, and shout, in their 

 summer home — the woods of the north 

 — but they are very quiet when winter- 

 ing with us, and often flit away without 

 a sound. 



Of the nuthatches, the pretty .white- 

 breasted one with his soft bluish-grey 

 coat and shining black head, is our fa- 

 miliar resident and the red-breasted an 

 occasional winter companion. They 

 are charming little birds, not spe- 

 cially musical, though their call is 

 vigorous and friendly, but very pretty 

 and gentle, and awakening perpetual 

 wonder and admiration at their feats as 

 acrobats, running as lightly head down- 

 wards as in a natural position, and show- 

 ing equal swiftness and grace in every 

 movement, whether with aid of wings 

 or without. They never seem in the 

 least afraid of us, but raise their softly 

 rounded heads and look at us with a 

 most delightful confidence. 



The brown creeper is like a bit of the 

 trunk in his brown tints, mottled as if 

 in mimicry of the play of light and 

 shadow on the bark. He is as truly a 

 tree-creature as ever Greek fable de- 

 vised, and can so flatten himself, 

 when alarmed, against a tree that no 

 inch of his light breast is visible, and it 

 is difficult, indeed, to recognize him as 

 a separate being. He is the one 

 species found in America of quite 

 a large Old World family, and has some 

 odd characteristics. First, his long tail, 

 used to aid him in climbing, is rather 

 curved and stiff and generally worn by 

 constant use. His bill is also curved, 

 so that the profile of his figure is like a 

 relaxed bow as he works his plodding 

 way up the side of the tree, diligently 

 seeking insects, eggs, and larvae, in the 

 minute crevices of the bark. He sticks 

 his little nest, made, of course, of bits 

 of dead wood, bark, and twigs, between 

 the tree and a strip of loose bark, very 

 like a part of the tree itself, and the 

 eggs are spotted and dotted with wood 



colors, brown in different shades, and 

 lavender. Altogether his life is a tree- 

 study; the tree is to him home, model, 

 hunting-ground, hiding-place, and ref- 

 uge. He never descends by creeping, 

 but when he wants to search a lower 

 part of the trunk, he flies to the base, 

 and begins it all over again. In the 

 summer fir-wood, farther northward, it 

 is said he sings, but in winter-time we 

 hear only a faint squeak, a little like 

 one bough scraping against another. 



The black-and-white creeping warb- 

 ler is very like our sober brown creeper 

 in habit, but he, like most of his gay 

 brethren, is only a summer guest. In 

 his place we have Carolina chickadees 

 and golden-crowned kinglets-and even, 

 by good luck, an occasional ruby- 

 crowned. All these tiny creatures have 

 the most charming and airy ways of 

 flitting from bough to bough, swinging 

 lightly from the utmost end of a 

 bough, daintily dropping to unex- 

 pected resting-places, and rarely paus- 

 ing for a second's breathing-time any- 

 where. The Carolina chickadee is said 

 to have a longer note and more varied 

 repertoire than his northern cousin, yet 

 whenever I have heard him in winter 

 weather, there is the same silvery and 

 joyous tinkle of showering Chick-a-dee- 

 dee-dees from the pretty gray and black- 

 capped flock that I have heard in Mas- 

 sachusetts. Perhaps the variations are 

 more evident in his summer singing. 



I have left the kinglet for the last, but 

 it is hard to do justice to this lovely 

 little bird that, if the food-supply be all 

 right, will often elect to stay with us in 

 winter rather than migrate to Mexico. 

 His colors are exquisite, olive-green 

 bordered by darker tints that throw the 

 green above and the yellow-tinted white 

 below into fine relief; a brilliant crown 

 of reddish-gold, bordered by black and 

 yellow, and every feather preened to 

 satiny smoothness. He gleans his food 

 merrily, singing or calling softly to 

 himself as he works. His nest is built 

 in the far northern forests, sometimes 

 swinging as high as sixty feet, and 

 woven of pale green mosses, lined with 

 strips of the silky inside back and 

 down for the many nestlings. 



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