60 LAND-BIRDS. 



their offspring here. In summer they are shyer than in win- 

 ter, and often retire to secluded spots to rear their young, for 

 whom they exhibit a tender affection, which sometimes prompts 

 them, if robbed of their eggs, boldly to follow the intruder, 

 uttering plaintive cries and whistles, which almost force one 

 to repent of having disturbed the peace of such loving parents. 

 In autumn, when family cares are over, the Chickadees gather 

 in companies and resume a merry life. 



d. They have a great variety of simple or quaint notes, 

 aU of which seem to be exptessive of perpetual happiness, for 

 many of them are constantly repeated throughout the year, 

 and none are restricted to one season. Besides their well- 

 known chant, " chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee," which has given them 

 their name, they have an exquisite whistle of two notes (nearly 

 represented by high G and F, upon the piano), which is very 

 sweet and clear, and various minor but equally expressive 

 notes (among them a simple tsip"), as well as certain guttural 

 cries, one of which sounds like a rapid utterance of the French 

 ' phrase " tout de suite," and is indicative, as it were, of the 

 restless disposition of these birds. 



The Chickadees are universal favorites, and no birds have a 

 better right to be than these social and ha,ppy pygmies. I have 

 invariably found them to be very amiable, rarely disputing one 

 with another ; but Wilson considered them quarrelsome, and 

 speaks of having followed one, the singularity of whose notes 

 surprised him. Having shot it, he found its skull fractured 

 (as he supposed by a companion) but afterwards healed. One 

 passed the winter in my neighborhood whose chant may be 

 tolerably well expressed by the syllables " chick-a-pu-pti-pu" 

 the latter notes being somewhat like those of a Canary-bird, 

 but there is no reason to believe that his cranium was cracked. 



B. HUDSONicus. Hudsonian Chickadee. Hudson Bay 

 Chickadee* 

 a. About five inches long. " Pale olive brown ; crown, 



* Fonnd at all seaaons tlironghont and certainly more locally distributed 

 northern New England, where, how- during the breeding season than in 

 eyer, it is apparently less nnmerous autumn and winter. It may now be 



