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What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day, when the meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood?
Standing quite alone, far in the forest, while the wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our reflections of a richer variety than the life of cities. The chicadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last, as to more vulgar companions.
The different birds which I have named, as companions of the Chicadee, often assemble by seeming accident in large numbers upon one tree, and meeting with more company than is agreeable to them, they will often on these occasions make the wood resound with their noisy disputes.
They slightly resemble those of the Pewee, and are often supposed to come from some other bird, so different are they from the common note of the Chicadee. I have not been able to ascertain the circumstances under which the bird repeats this plaintive strain, but it is uttered both in summer and winter.
This was sad news for the Chicadee Tomtits; but they were brave little fellows, and seeing they could not help themselves, they went about making the best of it. Before a week had gone by they were in their usual good spirits again, scrambling about the snowy twigs, or chasing one another as before. They were glad to remember now that Mother Carey said that winter would end.
Indeed, there is such a variety in the notes uttered at different times by this bird, that, if they were repeated in uninterrupted succession, they would form one of the most agreeable of woodland melodies. The Chicadee is not a singing-bird.
Even those who are confined to the house are not excluded from a sight of these birds; one cannot open a window, on a bright winter's morning, without a greeting from one of them on the nearest tree. Beside the note from which the Chicadee derives his name, he sometimes utters two very plaintive notes, which are separated by a regular musical interval, making a fourth on the descending scale.
How sunny and warm and safe, to his woods-familiar eyes, looked the green forest world about him. No sound broke the mild tranquillity of the solitude, except, now and then, an elfish gurgle of the slow current, or the sweetly cheerful tsic-a-dee-dee of an unseen chicadee, or, from the intense blue overhead, the abrupt, thin whistle of a soaring fish-hawk.
The Chicadee is the smallest of the birds that remain with us during the winter. He is a permanent resident, and everybody knows him. He is a lively chatterer and an agreeable companion; and as he never tarries long in one place, he does not tire one with his garrulity. He is our attendant in all our pleasant winter-walks, in the orchard or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside.
He searches for grubs that are concealed in the wood of the tree; he examines those spots only where he hears their scratchings, bores the wood to obtain them, and then flies off. But the Chicadee looks for insects on or near the surface, and does not confine his search to trees.
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