Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 
the trees close by the house, where, through the sunshine, snow, 
and tempest of the entire winter, you may hear its cheery, 
irrepressible chichadee-dee-dee-dee or day-day-day as it swings 
around the dangling cones of the evergreens. It fairly over- 
flows with good spirits, and is never more contagiously gay than 
in a snowstorm. So active, so friendly and cheering, what 
would the long northern winters be like without this lovable little 
neighbor P 
It serves a more utilitarian purpose, however, than bracing 
faint-hearted spirits. ‘‘ There is no bird that compares with it in 
destroying the female canker-worm moths and their eggs,” writes 
a well-known entomologist. He calculates that as a chickadee 
destroys about 5,500 eggs in one day, it will eat 138,750 eggs in 
the twenty-five days it takes the canker-worm moth to crawl up 
the trees. The moral that it pays to attract chickadees about 
your home by feeding them in winter is obvious. Mrs. Mabel 
Osgood Wright, in her delightful and helpful book “ Birdcraft,”’ 
tells us how she makes a sort of a bird-hash of finely minced raw 
meat, waste canary-seed, buckwheat, and cracked oats, which 
she scatters in a sheltered spot for all the winter birds. The 
way this is consumed leaves no doubt of its popularity. A raw 
bone, hung from an evergreen limb, is equally appreciated. 
Friendly as the chickadee is—and Dr. Abbott declares it the 
tamest bird we have—it prefers well-timbered districts, especially 
where there are red-bud trees, when it is time to nest. It is very 
often clever enough to leave the labor of hollowing out a nest in 
the tree-trunk to the woodpecker or nuthatch, whose old homes 
it readily appropriates; or, when these birds object, a knot-hole 
or a hollow fence-rail answers every purpose. Here, in the sum- 
mer woods, when family cares beset it, a plaintive, minor whistle 
replaces the chickadee-dee-dee that, Thoreau likens to “silver tink- 
ling” as he heard it on a frosty morning. 
“Piped a tiny voice near by, 
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry— 
Chick-chickadeedee! saucy note 
Out of sound heart and merry throat, 
As if it said, ‘Good-day, good Sir! 
Fine afternoon, old passenger! 
Happy to meet you in these places 
Where January brings few faces.’” 
— Emerson. 
77 
