h summer and winter, their sweet minor tunes!

No one can deny that the tomtit is a companionable little fellow. In
addition to his vigorous call of "Chick-a-dee-dee," he whistles, as has
been said, a sweet minor strain which may be represented by the
syllables, "Phe-e-be-e," repeated again and again. Often in midwinter,
when bland days come, and even in very cold weather, too, sometimes, he
will pipe his pensive air, which floats through the woods like a song
of chastened sadness.

Not infrequently two tits will engage in what may be called a
"responsive exercise," swinging their two-part song back and forth in
the woods like a silvery pendulum. Not soon shall I forget a winter
day on which I listened with delight to such an antiphonal duet. I was
standing in a road that wound along the foot of a steep, wooded bluff,
and the two minstrels were in the woods above me, one of them singing
very high in the scale, the other responding in the same tune, but
almost, if not quite, an octave lower. At first they were about twenty
rods apart, but as they swung back and forth, they gradually approached
each other until the distance between them was only a few feet. The
music seemed like a slender thread of silver which was being wound up
at both ends, gradually drawing the little fluters together. Sometimes
one of them would miss one note of his dissyllabic song, and at times
the refrains were repeated in a leisurely way, at times in quick
succession; but the performers never sang simultaneously, each waiting
until his fellow minstrel had given his reply. The pleasing duet
lasted for many minutes; indeed, it was kept up long after I left the
immediate neighborhood, for when I had gone quite a distance the sweet
cadenzas still fell rhythmically on my ear. To my mind the two-part
aria seemed like a voluntary performance, and I cannot doubt that it
was. There was too much of an air of purpose about it to permit of the
thought that it was a mere accident or coincidence; but whether it was
a musical contest between rival vocalists, or the love song of a tomtit
and his mate, I could not determine.

Cunning in other ways, it would be strange if the tomtits did not
display acuteness in the selection of nesting sites. A cosy hollow in
a dead snag or stump is especially acceptable. Sometimes it is a
deserted woodpecker's cavity made trig and clean, while quite often,
when the wood is soft enough, the tits themselves chisel ou