The Chickadee /7 



In winter, when hunger is satisfied, they will descend to the 

 snow and quench their thirst by swallowing small bits. In 

 this way their various and frugal meal is always easily 

 supplied; and hardy and warmly clad in light and very downy 

 feathers, they suffer little inconvenience from the inclemency 

 of the seasons. Their roost is in the hollows of decayed 

 trees, where they also breed, making a soft nest of moss, hair 

 and feathers, and laying from six to twelve eggs, which are 

 white, with specks of brown-red. They begin to lay about the 

 middle or close of April, and though they commonly make use 

 of natural or deserted holes of the woodpecker, yet they fre- 

 quently excavate a cavity for themselves with much labor. 

 The first brood takes wing about the 7th or loth of June, and 

 there is sometimes a second brood toward the end of July. 

 The young, as soon as fledged, have all the external marks of 

 the adult, the head is equally black, and they chatter and skip 

 about with all the agility and self-possession of their parents, 

 who appear nevertheless very solicitous for their safety. 



From this time on the whole family continue to associate 

 together through the autumn and winter. They seem to move 

 in concert from tree to tree, keeping up a continued Hshe-de- 

 de-de-de and ' tshe-de-de-de-dait, preceded by a shrill whistle, all 

 the while busily engaged picking around the buds and 

 branches, hanging from their extremities and proceeding 

 often in reversed posture, head downward, like so many 

 tumblers, prying into every crevice of the bark and searching 

 round the roots and in every possible retreat of their insect 

 prey or its larvee. If the object chance to fall, they industri- 

 ously descend to the ground and glean it up with the utmost 

 economy. 



Almost the only note of this bird which may be called a 

 song, is one which is frequently heard at intervals in the depth 



