So
active, so friendly and cheering, what would the long northern winters be like
without this lovable little neighbor?
It serves a more utilitarian purpose, however, than bracing faint-hearted
spirits. "There is no bird that compares with it in destroying the female
canker-worm moths and their eggs," writes a well-known entomologist. He
calculates that as a chickadee destroys about 5,500 eggs in one day, it will
eat 138,750 eggs in the twenty-five days it takes the canker-worm moth to
crawl up the trees. The moral that it pays to attract chickadees about your
home by feeding them in winter is obvious. Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, in her
delightful and helpful book "Birdcraft," tells us how she makes a sort of a
bird-hash of finely minced raw meat, waste canary-seed, buckwheat, and cracked
oats, which she scatters in a sheltered spot for all the winter birds. The way
this is consumed leaves no doubt of its popularity. A raw bone, hung from an
evergreen limb, is equally appreciated.
Friendly as the chickadee is and Dr. Abbott declares it the tamest bird we
have it prefers well-timbered districts, especially where there are red-bud
trees, when it is time to nest. It is very often clever enough to leave the
labor of hollowing out a nest in the tree-trunk to the woodpecker or nuthatch,
whose old homes it readily appropriates; or, when these birds object, a
knot-hole or a hollow fence-rail answers every purpose.
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