70 



clothes before the fire, " I believe those 

 chickadees make me feel good-natured. 

 Seem kind of cheery, you know, and the 

 crowd needed it." 



And Ch'geegee, picking up his cracker 

 ^ crumbs, did not act at all as if he had done 

 most to make camp comfortable. 



There is another way in which he helps, a 

 more material way. Millions of destructive 

 insects live and multiply in the buds and 

 tender bark of trees. Other birds never see 

 them ; but Chickadee and his relations leave 

 never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes 

 find the tiny eggs hidden in the buds; his 

 keen ears hear the larvae feeding under the 

 bark, and a blow of his bill uncovers them in 

 their mischief -making. His services of this 

 kind are enormous, though rarely acknowl- 

 edged. 



Chickadee's nest is always neat and com- 

 fortable and interesting, just like himself. It 

 is a rare treat to find it. He selects an old 

 knot-hole, generally on the sheltered side of 

 a dry limb, and chisels a deep tunnel through 

 the heart of it. In the dry wood at the 



