thick pine shrubs, close up against a branch, with the pine needles
all about him, making it very dark; and what with the darkness, and
the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl generally gives up the
search and hunts in more open woods.

Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but it takes a very quick and a
very small pair of wings to follow Chickadee. Once I was watching him
hanging head down from an oak twig to which the dead leaves were
clinging; for it was winter. Suddenly there was a rush of air, a flash
of mottled wings and fierce yellow eyes and cruel claws. Chickadee
whisked out of sight under a leaf. The hawk passed on, brushing his
pinions. A brown feather floated down among the oak leaves. Then
Chickadee was hanging head down, just where he was before. "_Tsic a
dee?_ Didn't I fool him!" he seemed to say. He had just gone round his
twig, and under a leaf, and back again; and the danger was over. When
a hawk misses like that he never strikes again.

Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic liking for Chickadee. They
may be cruel or thoughtless to other birds, but seldom so to him. He
seems somehow like themselves.

Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows were hunting, one September
day, about the half-grown thickets of an old pasture. The older was
teaching the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk, and two or
three sparrows were already stowed away in their jacket pockets; a
brown rabbit hung from the older boy's shoulder. Suddenly the younger
raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head. Just in front a
chickadee hung and twittered among the birch twigs. But the older boy
seized his arm.