wish I could help. Perhaps I can. _Tic a dee-e-e?_"--with that gentle,
sweetly insinuating up slide at the end. Somebody spoke, for the first
time in half an hour, and it wasn't a growl. Presently somebody
whistled--a wee little whistle; but the tide had turned. Then somebody
laughed. "'Pon my word," he said, hanging up his wet clothes, "I
believe those chickadees make me feel good-natured. Seem kind of
cheery, you know, and the crowd needed it."

And Chickadee, picking up his cracker crumbs, did not act at all as if
he had done most to make camp comfortable.

There is another way in which he helps, a more material way. Millions
of destructive insects live and multiply in the buds and tender bark
of trees. Other birds never see them, but Chickadee and his relations
leave never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes find the tiny eggs
hidden under the buds; his keen ears hear the larvæ feeding under the
bark, and a blow of his little bill uncovers them in their
mischief-making. His services of this kind are enormous, though rarely
acknowledged.

Chickadee's nest is always neat and comfortable and interesting, just
like himself. It is a rare treat to find it. He selects an old
knot-hole, generally on the sheltered side of a dry limb, and digs out
the rotten wood, making a deep and sometimes winding tunnel downward.
In the dry wood at the bottom he makes a little round pocket and lines
it with the very softest material. When one finds such a nest, with
five or six white eggs delicately touched with pink lying at the
bottom, and a pair of chickadees gliding about, half fearful, half
trustful, it is altogether such a beautiful little spot that I know
hardly a boy who would be mean enough to disturb it.