ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 



11 



Training the Chickadees 



From widely separated places in Illi- 

 nois come reports of the abundance of 

 chickadees . during the past winter 

 months. It has been a good time to try 

 one's luck at luring chickadees to eat 

 from one's hand. The secretary of the 

 Illinois Audubon Society has been very 

 successful at doing this at her home in 

 Evanston and one of her pet chickadees 

 has learned to fly down at her call in 

 whatever part of her yard she happens 

 to be. Mrs. Pattee has not been able 

 to get any photographic record of her- 

 self and "bird guests," but Miss Grace 

 Putnam of Moline has been more suc- 

 cessful in that respect. The two pictures reproduced herewith show the 

 earliest and the final stages in training a chickadee. Miss Putnam writes. 

 "For several winters the chickadees and nuthatches have eaten from one 

 of our window-sills, but this last winter I determined to get the chickadees 

 to eat from my hand. So, all unconsciously they have been put through a 

 graded course of study. 



First, sitting inside the room. I put my hand on the window-sill out- 

 side, lowering the sash on my wrist. After a few frights the chickadees 

 became used to the motionless white 

 object and finally took the nuts from 

 my hand. Then day after day I grad- 

 ually raised the sash a little higher un- 

 til I was able to sit on the window-sill 

 and coax them to fly down by whistling 

 their sweet "pee-wee" call. They be- 

 came so tame that I could call them 

 from any door or window in the house 

 or even out on the walks, and they 

 would fly down for the nuts I had. 



They showed plainly which kind of 

 food they liked best. Their first choice 

 was the fat grubs we found in some 

 hickory nuts. They liked English wal- 

 nuts next best. Hickory nuts were ta- 

 booed. Several times one of the birds, 

 the tamest one of all, deliberately 

 picked up one hickory nut meat after 

 another from my hand and dropped it 

 on the ground. But when I held out 

 some English walnut meats and whis- 

 tled to him, he would come back and 

 eat greedily. We are hoping a pair of 

 them will choose the new Berlepsch 

 nesting box we have just put up in the 

 suet-trce." 



