74 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



in spring — indeed, during the winter, too — and 

 whistle a couple of times, to be answered, from near 

 or far, by a bird. After he has once answered you, 

 he will keep up the conversation, the musical dia- 

 logue, as long as your patience holds out, like a dog 

 chasing a stick. Mr. Matthews records a curious 

 thing about this performance. He has, he says, 

 frequently persuaded the chickadee to come down 

 to a lower pitch by setting his own whistle lower, 

 but he has never been able to persuade the bird to 

 go back to the original one after the descent. 



While it is easy for anybody to induce the chick- 

 adee to answer his whistle, comparatively few people 

 can imitate the timbre well enough to call the birds 

 directly to them. The artist for this book can, 

 however, and it is a quaint spectacle which would 

 have delighted the good Saint of Assisi to see him 

 with a fat little fellow on his head, another on his 

 hand, and still another on his shoulder, actually 

 answering the whistle directly into his mouth ! The 

 oddest part about this performance is that no mat- 

 ter how many birds come to the call, first into over- 

 hanging branches and then to his person, only one 

 of them does the replying, and that bird is the only 

 one which appears excited. He, however, is mani- 

 festly wrought up. His feathers fluff, his move- 

 ments are rapid, he is conspicuously restless. 



This song, undoubtedly, is connected with the 

 mating and domestic life of the chickadees. I have 

 records of observations which show that a bird 

 bringing food uttered it, that it was answered by 

 the mate inside the nesting-hole, and that she then 

 appeared out of the hole and took the food. Not 



