The Oregon Chickadee 
rabbits’ fur, wool, hair, or feathers, in made hole or natural cavity of stump or tree, 
usually not over ten feet from the ground, and near water. Eggs: 5-8, white, marked 
sparingly with reddish brown, in small spots, tending to gather about larger end. 
Av. size, 14.7 x 11.9 (.58 x .47). Season: April 15-May 15; one brood. 
Range of Penthestes atricapillus .—North America from limit of trees south to 
about the middle of the United States. 
Range of P. a. occidentalis .—Transition zone of northwest coast district from 
British.Columbia to extreme northern California. 
Occurrence in California. —Breeds sparingly in Siskiyou County. One defi¬ 
nite record, four specimens: Scott River, June 10 and 13, 1911, by Miss A. M. Alex¬ 
ander and Miss L. Kellogg. 
Authorities.—Grinnell, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 11, 1915, p. 163 (near 
Callahan, Siskiyou Co., June); Belding , Condor, vol. vii., 1905, p. 82 (crit.; early 
records in Calif.). 
THERE is only one record of the occurrence of this black-capped 
Chickadee of the North within our borders; but as that was a breeding 
record, we may suppose that the species is of regular occurrence in that 
ornithologically neglected region, western Siskiyou County. The Oregon 
Chickadee does not greatly differ in habit from our more familiar Chest¬ 
nut-backed species; but it has a predilection for water, and its nests should 
be looked for in some low, swampy woods, or in deciduous timber lining 
some stream, rather than in the uplands and evergreens frequented by 
P. rufescens and P. gambeli. Any appreciation of the “Oregon” Chickadee 
drawn from Californian material would be so inadequate that I venture 
some conclusions drawn from northern studies, and only regret that we 
lack excuse for more extended consideration of a most engaging bird. 
Chickadees are friendly little folk (and this remark applies, irrespec¬ 
tive of species), so that wherever they go, except in the busy nesting season, 
they form the nucleus of a merry band, Western Golden-crowned Kinglets, 
Sitkan Kinglets, Creepers, Juncoes, Towhees maybe, and a Bewick Wren 
or two to guard the terrestrial passage, and to furnish sport for the fed¬ 
erated fairies. The Chickadees are undisputed leaders, though their name 
be legion. While they remain aloft, we may mistake their dainty squeak- 
ings and minikin ways for those of Kinglets, but if we can only determine 
what direction the flock is pursuing, we may count on the vanguard’s 
being composed of these sprightly, saucy little Black-caps. 
Chickadee refuses to look down for long upon the world; or, indeed, 
to look at any one thing from any one direction for more than two con¬ 
secutive twelfths of a second. “Any old side up without care,” is the label 
he bears; and so with anything he meets, be it a pine-cone, an alder catkin, 
or a bug-bearing branchlet, top-side, bottomside, inside, outside, all is 
right side to the nimble Chickadee. Faith! their little brains must have 
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