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WALDEN. 
bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not 
much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first 
shy, went to work as if they were taking what was 
their own. 
Meanwhile also came the chicadees in flocks, which, 
picking up the erums the squirrels had dropped, flew 
to the nearest twig, and, placing them under their 
claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, 
as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were 
sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little 
flock of these tit-mice came daily to pick a dinner out 
of my wood-pile, or the crums at my door, with faint 
flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the 
grass, or else with sprightly day day day , or more 
rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from 
the wood-side. They were so familiar that at length 
one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carry¬ 
ing in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once 
had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a mo¬ 
ment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt 
that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than 
I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. 
The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and 
occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the 
nearest way. 
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and 
again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted 
on my south hill-side and about my wood-pile, the par¬ 
tridges came out of the woods morning and evening to 
feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the 
partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the 
snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which 
comes sifting down in the sun-beams like golden dust; 
