The Chicadee is the smallest of the birds that remain with us during the winter.  He is a permanent resident, and everybody knows him.  He is a lively chatterer and an agreeable companion; and as he never tarries long in one place, he does not tire one with his garrulity.  He is our attendant in all our pleasant winter-walks, in the orchard or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside.  We have seen him, on still winter-days, flitting from tree to tree, with the liveliest motions and in the most engaging attitudes, examining every twig and branch, and winding over and under and in and out among them, and, after a few lively notes, hopping to another tree to pass through the same manoeuvres.  Even those who are confined to the house are not excluded from a sight of these birds; one cannot open a window, on a bright winter’s morning, without a greeting from one of them on the nearest tree.

Beside the note from which the Chicadee derives his name, he sometimes utters two very plaintive notes, which are separated by a regular musical interval, making a fourth on the descending scale.  They slightly resemble those of the Pewee, and are often supposed to come from some other bird, so different are they from the common note of the Chicadee.  I have not been able to ascertain the circumstances under which the bird repeats this plaintive strain, but it is uttered both in summer and winter.  Indeed, there is such a variety in the notes uttered at different times by this bird, that, if they were repeated in uninterrupted succession, they would form one of the most agreeable of woodland melodies.

The Chicadee is not a singing-bird.  He utters his usual notes at all times of the year; but in the early part of summer he is addicted to a very low but pleasant kind of warbling, considerably varied, and wanting only more loudness and precision to entitle him to a rank with the singing-birds.  This warbling does not seem intended to cheer his partner, but it is rather a sort of soliloquizing for his own amusement.  If it was uttered by the young birds only, we might suppose them to be taking lessons in music, and that this was a specimen of their first attempts.  I have often heard the Golden Robin warbling in a similar manner.

In company with the Chicadees in their foraging excursions, we often see two Speckled Woodpeckers, differing apparently only in size, each having a sort of red crest.  The smaller of the two (Picus pubescens) is the Downy Woodpecker.  The birds of this species are called “Sap-Suckers,” from their habit of making perforations in the sound branches of trees through the bark without penetrating the wood, as if they designed only to obtain the sap.  These perforations are often made in a circle round the branch, and it is highly probable that they follow the path of a grub that is concealed underneath the bark.  Our farmers, who suspect every bird of some mischievous designs, accuse them of boring into the tree for the purpose of drinking the sap.