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By and by the first rays of light began to spread up the sky from the eastern horizon, and the earth seemed to wake very softly and look in that direction. With the light came a breath from the east, cool as a hand on the brow of fever. Twittering of sleepy chickadees were heard among the pines, and out in the lake a loon laughed. Day came with a swoop up the lake.
All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their 'Spring now, spring now now Spring now now, so persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a living. And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through.
It combined the elements of both skill and chance, and caused many moments of breathless suspense, as one or another gained or lost in the count. When it was finished, Marjorie was again her own rosy, smiling self, and though she still felt the vague weight of sorrow, she had spent a pleasant, enjoyable hour. "And now to bed, chickadees," cried their father, "it's long past nine!"
First of all, a Flicker had come years ago and dug put a fine big nesting-place, and used it maybe two or three times. When he was through, or maybe between seasons, the Chickadees made a winter den of it, for there were some Chickadee tail-feathers in the bottom. Next a Purple Blackbird came and used the hole, piling up a lot of roots with mud on them.
Only a mere fraction of tree surface is searched over at any one time. In large forests probably only a mere fraction of the trees are visited at all. One cold day in midwinter, when I was walking through the snowless woods, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers upon the ground, and upon roots and fallen branches.
There is plenty of room, so Thistle could sleep here all winter. We would let him perch on a branch, when we Chickadees would nestle around him until he was as warm as in the lovely summer time. These cones are so full of seeds that we could spare him a good many; and I think that you Robins might let him come over to your pines some day and share your seeds.
He had dropped it when I surprised him, so that I should not suspect him of nest-building. Such a bright, helpful little fellow should have never an enemy in the world; and I think he has to contend against fewer than most birds. The shrike is his worst enemy, the swift swoop of his cruel beak being always fatal in a flock of chickadees.
A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow tree at the first click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their blandishments tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are are you a harbinger?"
The little red-bellied nuthatches, the chickadees, and little brown creepers, threading the furrows of the bark of the pines, searching for food in the crevices.
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs 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.
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