The black-and-white creeping warbler is very like our sober brown creeper in habit, but he, like most of his gay brethren, is only a summer guest. In his place we have Carolina chickadees and golden-crowned kinglets--and even, by good luck, an occasional ruby-crowned. All these tiny creatures have the most charming and airy ways of flitting from bough to bough, swinging lightly from the utmost end of a bough, daintily dropping to unexpected resting-places, and rarely pausing for a second's breathing-time anywhere. The Carolina chickadee is said to have a longer note and more varied _repertoire_ than his northern cousin, yet whenever I have heard him in winter weather, there is the same silvery and joyous tinkle of showering _Chick-a-dee-dee-dees_ from the pretty gray and black-capped flock that I have heard in Massachusetts. Perhaps the variations are more evident in his summer singing. I have left the kinglet for the last, but it is hard to do justice to this lovely little bird that, if the food-supply be all right, will often elect to stay with us in winter rather than migrate to Mexico. His colors are exquisite, olive-green bordered by darker tints that throw the green above and the yellow-tinted white below into fine relief; a brilliant crown of reddish-gold, bordered by black and yellow, and every feather preened to satiny smoothness. He gleans his food merrily, singing or calling softly to himself as he works. His nest is built in the far northern forests, sometimes swinging as high as sixty feet, and woven of pale green mosses, lined with strips of the silky inside back and down for the many nestlings. [Illustration: Butter-nut. Edible pine. Cross section Black Walnut. Cocoa-nut. Butter-nut in husk. Black Walnut. PRES. BY CUNEO BROS. COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.] THE COCOA-NUT.