A Hermit's Wild Friends; or, Eighteen Years in the Woods

by Mason Augustus Walton

"Thanks to the hermit-thrush, my thoughts were turned into a new and healthy channel. I fell asleep that night on my fragrant bed of fir-boughs, at peace with the whole world."

XVII.
THE CHICKADEES

The chickadees are with me the year through. In winter they collect into a flock and remain near the cabin, but when the snow departs, they drift away in pairs, in search of a good nesting site. From this time, until the young birds are large enough to fly, the chickadees come to my cabin in pairs. The domestic life of the chickadee overflows with love, joy, and devotion. These little birds when once mated are mated for life. There is no divorce in the bird family, from eagles down to humming-birds. It is a rare treat to watch a pair of chickadees in the nesting season. I was walking along the old highway last season, when I heard one of my chickadees calling to me. This bird had a way of calling "Dee, dee, dee" whenever she met me in the woods. I usually carry food along, and she would come to my hand and help herself. After she had satisfied her appetite, she flew down the side-hill to Magnolia Swamp. I followed her, and found her mate excavating a nest in a small dead paper-birch. I expect that his wife told him that I was coming, but he did not quit work for five minutes. When I had approached, he bobbed his head out of the entrance, but instantly returned to his work. When he did come out, he appeared hungry, and attacked a doughnut with vigor, winding up with hemp-seed. From the way the birds attacked food, it was evident that they would have had to seek the cabin soon, if I had not happened along.

I talk to the chickadees as I would to human beings, so when I had seated myself on a boulder, within four feet of the nest, I told my friends that I was making them a friendly call, and begged them to keep right on with their work. The chickadees said something to me in reply, and may have understood what I said to them, for they returned at once to enlarging the hole in the birch. The hole in the paper-birch, which formed the entrance, was one inch and one eighth in diameter, and round as it could well be. The depth was six inches, and the birds were at work in the bottom making the hole deeper. While the husband was eating his breakfast, the little wife was down in the hole, and I could hear the blows of her sharp bill. After breakfast, the husband flew to the entrance and called to his wife. She bobbed out and he bobbed in. Instead of resting, she occupied the time with eating hemp-seed. At the end of three minutes, the mate appeared with a piece of dead wood in his bill. He flung the wood one side, and disappeared calling his mate. She flew to the entrance, and, clinging to the edge of the hole, she reached down inside and brought up a bill-full of chippings, which she dropped outside. This was followed up until the chippings were exhausted. Then the male hammered away, while the female ate some more hemp-seed. Three minutes later he came out for a rest, and the female took his place. The birds appeared to work under a regular system, for the little wife came to the mouth of the hole and called her husband; he clung to the edge and reached inside for chippings, just as his wife did. The bird inside must have passed the chippings up to the bird outside. Quite a scheme to save labor.

From time to time I visited this nest to inspect the work. When the hole was about nine inches in depth, the birds put in the nesting material. If these birds had not become partly domesticated, the foundation of the nest would have been moss (Sphagnum), with a lining of fur or grouse feathers. My chickadees have changed the nesting habit, using nothing but cotton-batting for foundation and lining. Eight eggs were laid in this nest, and every one hatched.

The flock of chickadees that have gathered at my cabin this winter for food will number about fifty. They are so tame that they enter the cabin and eat from the table. One bird has demonstrated to me that she possesses a keen memory and an intelligence that is phenomenal. For four winters she has made it a practice to rap on the window when she is hungry, or desires to come in the cabin. Her method, followed each day, is peculiar. She raps if I am inside, and not otherwise. If I am sitting outside, she never approaches the window. It is evident that she raps to attract my attention. After rapping, she goes to the door and waits for me. If I do not respond, she returns to the window and raps again, louder than before. She waits at the door a short time, and if I do not come, she returns to the window and stays right there, and raps vigorously all the time. Not only is it peculiar that she is intelligent enough to know that she can attract my attention, but it is also peculiar that she can remember from one winter to another how to go through the intelligent act.

One of my bird-loving friends, the late "Frank Bolles," for many years the secretary of Harvard College, was telling me of the intelligence of the chickadees around Chocorua. I told him that my chickadees could count four. Mr. Bolles laughed, and said: "I am quite a bird crank, but I think I will have to draw the line at counting. What have you for proof?" I called his attention to the method employed by the chickadees when eating hemp-seed. Not having the stout cone bill of the finch family, a chickadee was obliged to hold a seed between its toes and beat off the hull, to get at the meat. A chickadee would fly into the dooryard after a hemp-seed, then fly to a small twig, and, holding the seed between its toes, hammer away until the meat was threshed out. Some of the old birds would carry away as many as four seeds. These birds let their brains save their wings. When a bird carried away four seeds, three were usually placed in the rough bark of a limb until wanted. I fed the chickadees, and a dozen or more were soon busy taking seed from the dooryard. A pet bird, of long standing, was pointed out to Mr. Bolles as one that could count four. The bird picked up four seeds, and flew to a limb over my head. Near the bole of the tree she deposited three seeds, and took the fourth one to a small twig, about eight feet away. Before she got through with the first seed, I pushed one of the three off the limb. Mr. Bolles scouted the idea that the bird would miss the seed on the ground. After the bird had disposed of three seeds, it hunted in the bark of the limb at first, and then dropped to the ground and found the missing seed. If two seeds were pushed off, the chickadee would hunt for both. Mr. Bolles admitted that the bird could count four, and possibly more than that number if it was necessary.