He is a friendly little soul, who loves your neighborhood, as, indeed, most birds do; who has no fear of you, because he cannot think that you could fear him and so would want to hurt him. Nature made him an insect-eater; but he has a mission to perform besides eating pestiferous insects, and their eggs and grubs. This destruction of insects he does that the balance of things may be maintained out of doors, lest the insects destroy us. He has quite another work to do, which is not a matter of grubs, and which in no wise is a matter of fine feathers or sweet voice, but simply a matter of sweet nature, vigor, and concentrated cheerfulness. Chickadee is a sermon. I hear him on a joyous May morning calling _Chick-a-dee! dee! Chick-a-dee! dee!_--brisk, bright, and cheery; or, soft and gentle as a caress, he whistles, _Phœ-ee-bee! Phœ-ee-bee!_ I meet him again on the edge of a bleak winter night. He is hungry and cold, and he calls, as I hasten along, _Chick-a-dee! dee! Chick-a-dee! dee!_ brisk, bright, and cheery; or, following after me, he talks to me with words as soft and gentle as a caress. Will you lend me your wings, Chickadee, your invisible wings on which you ride the winds of life so evenly? The abundant summer, the lean and wolfish winter, find Chickadee cheerful and gentle. He is busier at some seasons than at others, with fewer chances for friendship. He almost disappears in the early summer. But this is because of family cares; and because the bigger, louder birds have come back, and the big leaves have come out and hidden him. A little searching, and you will discover him, in one of your old decayed fence-posts, maybe, or else deep in the swamp, foraging for a family of from six to eight, that fairly bulge and boil over from the door of their home. Here about Mullein Hill, this is sure to be a gray-birch home. Other trees will do--on a pinch. I have found Chickadee nesting in live white oaks, maples, upturned roots, and tumbling fence-posts. These were shifts, only, mere houses, not real homes. The only good homelike trees are old gray birches, dead these many years and gone to punk--mere shells of tough circular bark walls. Halfway down the hill is a small grove of these birches that we call the Seminary (because, as a poet friend says, “they look like seminary girls in white frocks”). Here the chickadees love to build. Why has Chickadee this very decided preference? Is it a case of protective coloration--the little gray and black bird choosing to nest in this little gray and black tree because bird and tree so exactly match one another in size and color? Or is there a strain of poetry in Chickadee’s soul, something fine, that leads him into this exquisite harmony--into this little gray house for his little gray self?