snow. They
are sparrow-size, like the nuthatch, and their faint chirpings are
much like those of the chickadee. The slate gray of their head,
throat, back and breast is an interesting color, and is relieved from
somberness by the white under parts and the yellow bills. The white
outer tailfeathers show plainly as they fly. They frequent the road
through the timber and have some of the habits of the English sparrow.
The winter woods would miss them.

Chickadees were busy in the birches. Surely the chickadee is one of
the dearest little fellows that fly. He has four modes of expression:

1. The well-known "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee."

2. The "pe-ho," which ought to be written "la sol," pitched at about
upper D and C, above the soprano staff, and timed like two quarter
notes.

3. The faint chirpings as he works.

4. A happy little gurgling song, which can hardly be translated into
words.

The chickadee wears a black cap with a white vest and a blue-gray
coat, completing his costume with a black necktie, and he is perfectly
willing to sit for you and have his picture taken.

Mr. Blue Jay sat in a clump of dogwood, doing nothing. He was not so
tame as the others and yet he permitted a twenty-foot view of his
blue-gray coat, his aristocratic crest, his dusky white vest, his
white-tipped tail and the black band across the back of his head, down
the neck and across the breast--like a black collar worn very low
down. It was a spring-like morning, the thermometer rapidly rising
toward forty-five, and Mr. Blue Jay was in one of his imitative moods.
There is hardly a limit to his vocabulary, and it would not be
surprising if some of his imitative stunts should be mistaken for the
call of an early robin. Among these calls is a liquid gurgle, like
hard cider coming out of the neck of a big brown jug. Another, and a
common one, is two slurred eighth notes, repeated, "sol te, sol
te"--upper G and B in the key of C.

Meanwhile the woods had been resounding with the lively tattoo of the
woodpecker, and finally Downy was found at the top of a dead dry elm,
busily doing this reveille, fast and loud as the roll of a snare drum.
His head was going so fast that it looked like a quick series of heads
and the tree rattled so it could be heard afar. Most writers regard
this as the woodpecker's love call, a sign of spring, as it were--but
Downy is usually heard and seen doing it on warm days every month in
the winter. The females are seen a