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Range (Southeastern United States) (II)
Southeastern United States, north to middle New Jersey and Illinois; resident from southern New Jersey southward. Washington, very common P. R., particularly in winter. Nest, of grasses, fine strips of bark, feathers, hair, etc., in holes in trees, stumps, etc. Eggs, five to eight, similar in color to those of P. atricapillus. My experience with this southern Chickadee has been confined largely to Florida. There I found it a comparatively shy bird, with notes quite unlike those of P. atricapillus. Instead of the two clear whistles which atricapillus in New Jersey utters, the Florida bird repeats four rather tremulous notes, and there is also a substantial difference in its other calls, one of which resembles the words my watcher key, my watcher key.
Mr. C. W. Richmond writes me that at Washington the chick-a-dēē call of carolinensis is higher pitched and more hurriedly given than that of atricapillus, and that the whistle consists of three notes. Writing from the mountains of North Carolina, where both species occur together, Mr. Brewster says: "In one place a male of each species was singing in the same tree, the low, plaintive tswee-dee-twseedee of the P. carolinensis, contrasting sharply with the ringing te-derry of its more northern cousin" (The Auk, vol. iii, 1886, p. 177). Ad.- 740. Parus hudsonicus Forst. HUDSONIAN CHICKADEE.
Crown dull, dark brownish gray; back brownish ashy; wings and tail grayish; throat black; ear-coverts, sides of the neck, breast, and belly white; sides rufous.