BY THE WAYSIDE 
G1 
■ SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Etfery Wisconsin School Branch is required to subscribe for at least one copy of BY THE WAYSIDE 
Letters for this department should be written on only 
one side of the page, shonld give the name, age and ad¬ 
dress of the writer, and should be mailed by the first of 
the month; Illinois children sending to Miss Juliet 
Goodrich, 10 Astor St., Chicago, Ill., and Wisconsin 
children to Miss Ruth Marshall, Appleton. Wis. An 
honor badge will be awarded for each state every month, 
preference beiug given to letters about the bird study 
for the month (which is always on this page) and to or¬ 
iginal observations. Any child .who wins the honor 
badge twice will receive By The Wayside one year as a 
prize. , l 
The wren button, which is the badge of the Audubon 
Society, costs tv r o cents, and may be bought from Miss 
Goodrich or Miss Marshall. 
Any Wisconsin School Branch may, without expense, 
have the use of the Gordon and Merrill Libraries of bird 
books, by applying to Miss Edna Edwards. Librarian, 
S4G Prospect Sr.. Appleton. 
A set of colored bird slides with a. typewriter lecture 
may be rented from Prof. W. S. Marshall, 114 E. Gorham 
Street. Madison, Wis. 
Illinois Schools, may use. without expense, a library 
or a lecture with lantern 'slides, by applying to Mrs. 
Ruthven Deane, 5U4 N. State St., Chicago. 
* H • . *■ , 
The Chickadee. 
Length.—5 to 5.5 inches. About an 
inc;h smaller than the English Sparrow. 
Male and Female.—Not crested. 
Crown, nape and throat black. Above 
grave slightly tinged with brown. A 
white space, beginning at base of bill, ex¬ 
tends Aiackwjp*ds, widening over cheeks 
tmd upper part of breast, forming a sort 
of collar, that almost surrounds the neck. 
Underneath dirty white, with pale, rusty- 
brown wash on sides; wings and tail gray, 
with white edgings. Plumage downy. 
Range.—Eastern North America. 
Ndrth of the Carolina^ to Labrador. 
No ‘‘fair weather friend” is the jolly 
little chickadee. In the depth of the 
autumn equinoctial storm it returns to 
the tops of the trees close by the house, 
where through sunshine, snow and tem¬ 
pest during the entire winter you may 
hear- its cheery, irrepressible “chickadee- 
dee-dee-dee” or “day-day-day” as it 
■9 
swings around the dangling cones of the 
evergreens. * * * It serves a more util- 
atarian purpose, 'however, than bracing 
faint-hearted spirits: “There is no bird 
that compares with it in destroying the 
female canker-worm moths and their 
e ,rirc.” writes a well-known entomologist. 
He calculates, that as a chickadee de¬ 
stroys about 5,500 in a dav, it will eat 
138,750 eggs in the twenty-five davs it 
takes the canker-worm moth to crawl up 
the trees. The moral that it pays to 
attract chickadees about vour home bv 
feeding them in winter, is obvious. Mrs. 
Mabel Osgood Wright, in her delightful 
and helpful book “Bird-craft,” tells ms 
how she makes a sort of 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. * * * 
Friendly as 1 the chickadee is—and Dr. 
Abbott declares it the tamest bird we have. 
—it prefers well-timbered districts, espe¬ 
cially 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 wood¬ 
pecker or nuthatch, whose old homes it 
readily appropriates; or. when these 
birds object, a knot-hole or a hollow 
if '. , -. 
fence-rail aiiswers every purpose. Here 
in the summer woods, when family cares 
beset it,' a plaintive, minor whistle re¬ 
places the “chickadee-dee-dee” that 
Thoreau likens to “silver tinkling” as he 
heard it on a frosty morning .—Bird 
Neighbors, Neltje Blanchau. 
Letter about the chickadee should be 
sent to the secretaries by the first of 
March. 
Illinois Prize Letter. 
Florid, Ill., Eeh. 1, 1906. 
Dear Wayside: 
Since we have been having winter 
weather and the ground is covered with* 
sleet and snow, tl)ere has been quite a 
flock of birds from farther north visiting 
us. I saw about one hundred and fiftv 
slate-colored juncos and a few tree spar- 
