May, I9o6 ? THE CHICKADEE AT HOME doorway, and a moment later she popped into the hole and continued her brooding. I watched the chickadees for a few days after the eggs were hatched. Both birds fed in turn, and the turns were anywhere from three to ten minutes apart. From the time the callow chicks were hatched, the parents were busy from daylight to dark. They searched every leaf and twig along the limbs and trunk to the roots of every tree, under bark and moss, in ferns, bushes and vines, and they hunted thoroly. Such numbers of spiders they ate, and green caterpillars and brown worms, grasshoppers, daddy-long-legs, moths, millers and flies, besides untold numbers of eggs and larvae. Everything was grist that went to the chick- adee mill. The way they could tnrn insects into feathers, distributing black and white pigments just where they belonged, was simply marvelous. A baby chickadee changes about as much in a day as a human baby does in a year. One can readily estimate the amount of insect life that is destroyed in a day, when the parents return every few minutes with food. Think of how closely every bush and tree is gone over e. verywhere about the nest. One chicka- dee nest in an orchard means the destruction of hundreds and maybe thousandsof harm- ful insects and worms every day. It more than pays for all the fruit the birds can de- stroy in a dozen seasons. I spent t?vo whole days at the nest before the young chicks were ready to leave home. The owners of the stump seemed to think we had placed the camera there for their convenience, for they generally used the tripod for a perch. Then they always paused a second at the thres- hold before entering. The seven eggs had pretty well filled the nest. Now it looked like an overflow. It seemed to me that if the little chicks continued to grow they would either have to be stacked up in tiers or lodged in an upperstory. Once the mother came with a white miller. She had pulled the wings off, but even then it looked entirely too big for a baby's mouth. Not a single nestling but wanted to try it. When the mother left, I looked in and one little fellow sat with the miller bulging OUt of his mouth. It wouldn't go down any further, but he lay back in apparent satisfaction; digestion was working at a high speed below. I saw the miller gradually slipping down, until finally the last leg disappeared as he gave a strenuous gulp.
