Chickadee 
building their house upon the sand. Any creature 
without wings would have known that. Birds, how- 
ever, seem to have lost the sense of such insecu- 
rity, often placing their nests as if they expected 
them also to take wings and fly to safety when the 
rains descend and the winds come. 
This shaking stub of the chickadees was standing 
directly beneath a great overshadowing pine, where, 
if no partridge bumped into it, if two squirrels did not 
scamper up it together, if the crows nesting overhead 
did not discover it, if no strong wind bore down upon 
it from the meadow side, it might totter out the nest- 
ing season. But it didn’t. The birds were leaving 
too much toluck. I knew it, and should have pushed 
their card house down, then and there, and saved the 
greater ruin later. Perhaps so, but I was too inter- 
ested in their labor. 
Both birds were working when I discovered them, 
and so busily that my coming up did not delay them 
for a single billful. It was not hard digging, but it 
was very slow, for chickadee is neither carpenter nor 
mason. He has difficulty in killing a hard-backed bee- 
tle. So, whenever you find him occupying a clean- 
walled cavity, with a neat, freshly clipped doorway, 
83 
