72 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



writers say they excavate these holes for them- 

 selves, but I have never seen a nest in a hole which 

 didn't appear to have been already dug. The act- 

 ual nest is made of wood fiber, wool, hair, fine 

 moss, feathers, or other soft material. They take 

 the hair where they can get it. Thoreau, who loved 

 the chickadees and used to watch them pecking 

 bread out of the French-Canadian woodchopper's 

 hand in the Concord woods, records a nest in a small 

 maple stump which seemed to be made of bluish- 

 slate rabbit's fur. Mr. Stone has seen a chickadee 

 taking hair from the back of a Jersey cow for two 

 hours. If they take hair from a cow, they un- 

 doubtedly used to take it — and perhaps still do 

 in the deep woods — from the backs of the deer. 

 They lay a sizable number of little white eggs, 

 with rusty, reddish - brown spots. The young 

 birds, when they get their feathers, are indescrib- 

 ably adorable; but it is not often that you will 

 see them. The male and female birds do not 

 differ in appearance, so it is usually impossible 

 to determine which is the mother, except in the 

 incubating season. 



The song of the chickadee is very simple, but to 

 many ears very beautiful in its absolute definiteness 

 of interval. Of course, the better known chick-a-dee- 

 dee-dee-dee-dee is not its song. That is more like 

 its college yell, into which it breaks at periodic in- 

 tervals out of sheer exuberance of spirits. Neither 

 is the song that tinkling little lisp with which it 

 talks to you from the low twigs of an apple-tree as 

 you pass by. Its song is the exquisitely clear whistle 

 which is most commonly heard in spring, and which 



