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One day I dug a dozen or more white grubs the larvæ of some beetle out of a decayed maple on my woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadees soon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast as ever they could, distributing them among the branches of the Norway spruces. Among the grubs was one large white one half the size of one's little finger.
Sparrows may hover about him and peck in vain; chickadees may clutch the dangling finger and pound with all their tiny might. Prometheus is "bound," indeed, and merely swings the faster, up and down, from side to side.
Fortunately the miserable chilblain pain began to abate as soon as the temperature of our feet approached the freezing-point, enabling us in spite of hard work and hard frost to enjoy the winter beauty, the wonderful radiance of the snow when it was starry with crystals, and the dawns and the sunsets and white noons, and the cheery, enlivening company of the brave chickadees and nuthatches.
I remember with interest several such acquaintanceships. One of these was with a yellow-bellied woodpecker, the first I had ever seen. He made his appearance one morning in October, along with a company of chickadees and other birds, and at once took up his quarters on a maple-tree near the Ether monument.
The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of the season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the first flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed the place again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Every company had its complement of chickadees.
The singing of birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing of busy chipmunks. These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry.
Jays and chickadees hold the nut or seed they would peck under the foot, but the nuthatch makes a vise to hold it of the bark of the tree, and one act is just as intelligent as the other; both are the promptings of instinct. But when man makes a vise, or a wedge, or a bootjack, he uses his individual intelligence.
I have seen an oriole ensconce himself for the night amid the thick cluster of leaves on the end of a maple branch, where soon after his mate built her nest. My chickadees, true to this rule, pass the arctic winter nights in little cavities in the trunks of trees like the woodpeckers.
Down through the sombre pines, here and there, flamed the delicate pink of a dogwood, the orange of the azaleas, or the golden yellow of aspens ripening already under the hurrying of early frosts. The squirrels, Stellar's jays, woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees were very busy scurrying here and there, screaming gossip, or moving diligently and methodically as their natures were.
I am not sure that all birds do not have more or less of the same instinct; but certainly none ever before or since used it so well with me as Ch'geegee. For two hours or more I sat there beside the pine thicket, while the chickadees came and went. Sometimes they approached the nest from the other side, and I did not see them, or perhaps got only a glimpse as they glided into their doorway.
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