It 
Chickadee 
steps tows.rds the water’s edge,occasionally stopping and 
stretching up his long neck to look at me. He reminded me 
of a Sandhill Crane which he resembled not only in motions 
but in his nearly uniform bluish ashy coloring — between the 
blue of the river and sky as Thoreau says. Poor bird’. I 
hope that a shot which I heard at this bend an hour later 
did not end his career but I saw nothing of him when I 
paddled homeward at evening. There is a skeleton of one 
of these Herons under the pines on Davis’s Hill — shot 
there by some camper, I suppose, a.nd left to rot where it 
fell! It is indeed sad to think that the few large birds 
which still visit this river are so mercilessly pursued 
and wantonly slain. This fine creature, for instance, one 
evening adding life and interest to the meadows by its 
picturesque form and imposing flight, the next a heap of 
carrion and disheveled feathers under the pines where it 
met its fate! 
Qt hevr the phoebe note of the Chickadee fre¬ 
quently these Indian summer days but the bird does not 
utter it steadily and persistently as in spring. I am in¬ 
clined to consider it a true song note. So far as I know 
it is never given by the female nor by young birds^J 
