"Chic-chickadee dee!" I saucily say;
My heart it is sound, my throat it is gay!
Every one that I meet I merrily greet
With a chickadee dee, chickadee dee!
To cheer and to cherish, on roadside and street,
My cap was made jaunty, my note was made sweet.
Chickadeedee, Chickadeedee!
No bird of the winter so merry and free;
Yet sad is my heart, though my song one of glee,
For my mate ne'er shall hear my chickadeedee.
I "chickadeedee" in forest and glade,
"Day, day, day!" to the sweet country maid;
From autumn to spring time I utter my song
Of chickadeedee all the day long!
The silence of winter my note breaks in twain,
And I "chickadeedee" in sunshine and rain.
Chickadeedee Chickadeedee!
No bird of the winter so merry and free;
Yet sad is my heart, though my song one of glee,
For my mate ne'er shall hear my chickadeedee.--C. C. M.
A saucy little bird, so active and familiar, the Black-Capped Chickadee,
is also recognized as the Black Capped Titmouse, Eastern Chickadee, and
Northern Chickadee. He is found in the southern half of the eastern
United States, north to or beyond forty degrees, west to eastern Texas
and Indian Territory.
The favorite resorts of the Chickadee are timbered districts, especially
in the bottom lands, and where there are red bud trees, in the soft wood
of which it excavates with ease a hollow for its nest. It is often wise
enough, however, to select a cavity already made, as the deserted hole
of the Downy Woodpecker, a knot hole, or a hollow fence rail. In the
winter season it is very familiar, and is seen about door yards and
orchards, even in towns, gleaning its food from the kitchen remnants,
where the table cloth is shaken, and wherever it may chance to find a
kindly hospitality.
In an article on "Birds as Protectors of Orchards," Mr. E. H. Forbush
says of the Chickadee: "There is no bird that compares with it in
destroying the female canker-worm moths and their eggs." He calculated
that one Chickadee in one day would destroy 5,550 eggs, and in the
twenty-five days in which the canker-worm moths run or crawl up the
trees 138,750 eggs. Mr. Forbush attracted Chickadees to one orchard by
feeding them in winter, and he says that in the following summer it was
noticed that while trees in neighboring orchards were seriously damaged
by canker-worms, and to a less degree by tent caterpillars, those in the
orchard which had been frequented by the Chickadee during the winter and
spring were not seriously infested, and that comparatively few of the
worms and caterpillars were to be found there. His conclusion is that
birds that eat eggs of insects are of the greatest value to the farmer,
as they feed almost entirely on injurious insects and their eggs, and
are present all winter, where other birds are absent.
The tiny nest of the Chickadee is made of all sorts of soft materials,
such as wool, fur, feathers, and hair placed in holes in stumps of
trees. Six to eight eggs are laid, which are white, thickly sprinkled
with warm brown.
Mrs. Osgood Wright tells a pretty incident of the Chickadees, thus: "In
the winter of 1891-2, when the cold was severe, the snow deep, and the
tree trunks often covered with ice, the Chickadees repaired in flocks
daily to the kennel of our old dog Colin and fed from his dish, hopping
over his back and calling Chickadee, dee, dee, in his face, a proceeding
that he never in the least resented, but seemed rather to enjoy it."