Mountains and the Cascade Range in eastern Washington, | 
and he classifies them as such birds: plain chickadees. They — 
- looked very much like the gray-backed Oregon chickadees 
of the. coast country except they were a bit smaller and 
darker, and even an expert could tell them apart only when 
he had specimens of both kinds dead in his hands. 
Experts are necessary to decide for the average bird : 
lover that a particular variety is in a certain locality ; but 
after that has been decided, surely more specimens need not 
be collected. A Chickadee, wherever he happens to live, is 
a chickadee. While it may be boasted that the Northwest _ 
has four kinds of chickadees, why can’t we be satisfied when 
we see a graybacked chickadee on the western slope of the 
mountains to write in our notes, Oregon chickadee? And 
if in the region between the Rocky Mountains and the 
Cascades to write the type form chickadee? To be sure if 
a student should find a chickadee with a red-brown back on 
the eastern slope, it would be as astonishing as when a child — 
in Seattle brought in one that he had found on the sidewalk, 
which had a white stripe about its eye, because the back 
and flanks of that color mark the chestnut-backed chickadee | 
(Frontispiece) which belongs usually on the coast, while the 
whitestriped mountain chickadee is a bird of the high places © 
of the country from the Rocky Mountains to the Coast 
Range. 
The Spokane birds were | veedntebs of two other bird 
walks in very different places: one on a winter day on a 
little island just above Niagara Falls, where clear and 
strong, mingling with the roar of those mighty waters, 
came the call of the chickadee. The ground was white with © 
snow, the wind was stinging; but when the greeting was 
answered he came near énbaeh to show that the river and 
the island were his especial property. Another time, 
during the days that followed the Great War, while the 
- Americans were being brought home from France, 2 woman 
was climbing the lower slopes of Mt. Blane. While cross- 
ao : 
