The Lamar Register

THE CHICKADEE.

How This Bird May Be Tamed and How Nice He Is.

Set forth a feast of suet on the window sill, and the chickadee will need no bidding to come and partake of it, says the Atlantic Monthly.

How daintily he helps himself to the tiniest morsels, never cramming his bill with gross mouthfuls as do his comrades at the board, the nuthatch and the downy woodpecker.

They, like unbidden guests, doubtful of welcome or of sufferance even, make the most of time that may prove all too brief, and gorge themselves as greedily as hungry tramps; while he, unscared by your face at the window, tarries at his repast, picking his crumbs with leisurely satisfaction. You half expect to see him swept from your sight like a thistle-down by the gusty blast, but he holds bravely to his perch unruffled in spirit if not in feathers, and defies his fierce assailant with his oft-repeated challenge.

As often as you spread the simple feast for him he will come and sit at your board, a confiding guest, well assured of welcome, and will repay you with an example of cheerful life in the midst of dreariness and desolation. In the still bright days his cheery voice rings through the frosty air, and when the thick veil of the snow falls in a wavering slant from the low sky its muffled cadence still heartens you.

What an intense spark of vitality must it be that warms such a mite in such an immensity of cold; that floats his little life in the deluge of frigid air, and keeps him in song while we are cold and shivering! If our huge hulks were endowed with proportionate vitality, how easily might we solve the mysteries of the frozen North!