Ways of Wood Folk - William J. Long (portable ebook reader .txt) 📗

That is the name which the northern Indians give to the black-capped tit-mouse, or chickadee. "Little friend Ch'geegee" is what it means; for the Indians, like everybody else who knows Chickadee, are fond of this cheery little brightener of the northern woods. The first time I asked Simmo what his people called the bird, he answered with a smile. Since then I have asked other Indians, and always a smile, a pleased look lit up the dark grim faces as they told me. It is another tribute to the bright little bird's influence.

Chickadee wears well. He is not in the least a creature of moods. You step out of your door some bright morning, and there he is among the shrubs, flitting from twig to twig; now hanging head down from the very tip to look into a terminal bud; now winding upward about a branch, looking industriously into every bud and crevice. An insect must hide well to escape those bright eyes. He is helping you raise your plants. He looks up brightly as you approach, hops fearlessly down and looks at you with frank, innocent eyes. Chick a dee dee dee dee! Tsic a de-e-e?—this last with a rising inflection, as if he were asking how you were, after he had said good-morning. Then he turns to his insect hunting again, for he never wastes more than a moment talking. But he twitters sociably as he works.

You meet him again in the depths of the wilderness. The smoke of your camp fire has hardly risen to the spruce tops when close beside you sounds the same cheerful greeting and inquiry for your health. There he is on the birch twig, bright and happy and fearless! He comes down by the fire to see if anything has boiled over which he may dispose of. He picks up gratefully the crumbs you scatter at your feet. He trusts you.—See! he rests a moment on the finger you extend, looks curiously at the nail, and sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters any harmful insect. Then he goes back to his birch twigs.

On summer days he never overflows with the rollicksomeness of bobolink and oriole, but takes his abundance in quiet contentment. I suspect it is because he works harder winters, and his enjoyment is more deep than theirs. In winter when the snow lies deep, he is the life of the forest. He calls to you from the edges of the bleak caribou barrens, and his greeting somehow suggests the May. He comes into your rude bark camp, and eats of your simple fare, and leaves a bit of sunshine behind him. He goes with you, as you force your way heavily through the fir thickets on snowshoes. He is hungry, perhaps, like you, but his note is none the less cheery and hopeful.

When the sun shines hot in August, he finds you lying under the alders, with the lake breeze in your face, and he opens his eyes very wide and says: "Tsic a dee-e-e? I saw you last winter. Those were hard times. But it's good to be here now." And when the rain pours down, and the woods are drenched, and camp life seems beastly altogether, he appears suddenly with greeting cheery as the sunshine. "Tsic a de-e-e-e? Don't you remember yesterday? It rains, to be sure, but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow the sun will shine." His cheerfulness is contagious. Your thoughts are better than before he came.

Really, he is a wonderful little fellow; there is no end to the good he does. Again and again I have seen a man grow better tempered or more cheerful, without knowing why he did so, just because Chickadee stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. I remember once when a party of four made camp after a driving rain-storm. Everybody was wet; everything soaking. The lazy man had upset a canoe, and all the dry clothes and blankets had just been fished out of the river. Now the lazy man stood before the fire, looking after his own comfort. The other three worked like beavers, making camp. They were in ill humor, cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said nothing.

A flock of chickadees came down with sunny greetings, fearless, trustful, never obtrusive. They looked innocently into human faces and pretended that they did not see the irritation there. "Tsic a dee. I wish I could help. Perhaps I can. Tic a dee-e-e?"—with that gentle, sweetly insinuating up slide at the end. Somebody spoke, for the first time in half an hour, and it wasn't a growl. Presently somebody whistled—a wee little whistle; but the tide had turned. Then somebody laughed. "'Pon my word," he said, hanging up his wet clothes, "I believe those chickadees make me feel good-natured. Seem kind of cheery, you know, and the crowd needed it."

And Chickadee, picking up his cracker crumbs, did not act at all as if he had done most to make camp comfortable.

There is another way in which he helps, a more material way. Millions of destructive insects live and multiply in the buds and tender bark of trees. Other birds never see them, but Chickadee and his relations leave never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes find the tiny eggs hidden under the buds; his keen ears hear the larvæ feeding under the bark, and a blow of his little bill uncovers them in their mischief-making. His services of this kind are enormous, though rarely acknowledged.

Chickadee's nest is always neat and comfortable and interesting, just like himself. It is a rare treat to find it. He selects an old knot-hole, generally on the sheltered side of a dry limb, and digs out the rotten wood, making a deep and sometimes winding tunnel downward. In the dry wood at the bottom he makes a little round pocket and lines it with the very softest material. When one finds such a nest, with five or six white eggs delicately touched with pink lying at the bottom, and a pair of chickadees gliding about, half fearful, half trustful, it is altogether such a beautiful little spot that I know hardly a boy who would be mean enough to disturb it.

One thing about the nests has always puzzled me. The soft lining has generally more or less rabbit fur. Sometimes, indeed, there is nothing else, and a softer nest one could not wish to see. But where does he get it? He would not, I am sure, pull it out of Br'er Rabbit, as the crow sometimes pulls wool from the sheep's backs. Are his eyes bright enough to find it hair by hair where the wind has blown it, down among the leaves? If so, it must be slow work; but Chickadee is very patient. Sometimes in spring you may surprise him on the ground, where he never goes for food; but at such times he is always shy, and flits up among the birch twigs, and twitters, and goes through an astonishing gymnastic performance, as if to distract your attention from his former unusual one. That is only because you are near his nest. If he has a bit of rabbit fur in his bill meanwhile, your eyes are not sharp enough to see it.

Once after such a performance I pretended to go away; but I only hid in a pine thicket. Chickadee listened awhile, then hopped down to the ground, picked up something that I could not see, and flew away. I have no doubt it was the lining for his nest near by. 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. Fortunately the shrike is rare with us; one seldom finds his nest, with poor Chickadee impaled on a sharp thorn near by, surrounded by a varied lot of ugly beetles. I suspect the owls sometimes hunt him at night; but he sleeps in the thick pine shrubs, close up against a branch, with the pine needles all about him, making it very dark; and what with the darkness, and the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl generally gives up the search and hunts in more open woods.

Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but it takes a very quick and a very small pair of wings to follow Chickadee. Once I was watching him hanging head down from an oak twig to which the dead leaves were clinging; for it was winter. Suddenly there was a rush of air, a flash of mottled wings and fierce yellow eyes and cruel claws. Chickadee whisked out of sight under a leaf. The hawk passed on, brushing his pinions. A brown feather floated down among the oak leaves. Then Chickadee was hanging head down, just where he was before. "Tsic a dee? Didn't I fool him!" he seemed to say. He had just gone round his twig, and under a leaf, and back again; and the danger was over. When a hawk misses like that he never strikes again.

Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic liking for Chickadee. They may be cruel or thoughtless to other birds, but seldom so to him. He seems somehow like themselves.

Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows were hunting, one September day, about the half-grown thickets of an old pasture. The older was teaching the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk, and two or three sparrows were already stowed away in their jacket pockets; a brown rabbit hung from the older boy's shoulder. Suddenly the younger raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head. Just in front a chickadee hung and twittered among the birch twigs. But the older boy seized his arm.

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