374 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIKDS 



the voice of man express as much content as the note of 

 a bird? 



JVov. 26, 1859. The chickadee is the bird of the wood 

 the most unfailing. When, in a windy, or in any, day, 

 you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are 

 pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. At this sea- 

 son it is almost their sole inhabitant. 



Dec. 12, 1859. Seeing a little hole in the side of a 

 dead white birch, about six feet from the ground, I 

 broke it off and found it to be made where a rotten limb 

 had broken off. The hole was about an inch over and 

 was of quite irregular and probably natural outline, 

 and, within, the rotten wood had been removed to the 

 depth of two or three inches, and on one side of this 

 cavity, under the hole, was quite a pile of bird-drop- 

 pings. The diameter of the birch was little more than 

 two inches, — if at all. Probably it was the roosting- 

 place of a chickadee. The bottom was an irregular sur- 

 face of the rotten wood, and there was nothing like a nest. 



Jan. 12, 1860. As I stand by the hemlocks, I am 

 greeted by the lively and unusually prolonged tche de 

 de de de de of a little flock of chickadees. The snow 

 has ceased falling, the sun comes out, and it is warm 

 and still, and this flock of chickadees, little birds that 

 perchance were born in their midst, feeling the influ- 

 ences of this genial season, have begun to flit amid the 

 snow-covered fans of the hemlocks, jarring down the 

 snow, — for there are hardly bare twigs enough for 

 them to rest on, — or they plume themselves in some 

 snug recess on the sunny side of the tree, only pausing 

 to utter their tche de de de. 



