"One day in February we were, with much enjoyment, wading through a drifted highway that skirted a forest, the least twig of which bore a burden of soft snow.  Over all hung that silence of winter which is the most 'silent silence' . . . No breeze swayed a creaking branch or shook from it the snow in soft thud to the white carpet below.  Even the song of the brook was smothered beneath coverlets of ice and pillows of drift.  We stood fast, awed by the stillness, when suddenly it was broken by the thrilling notes of the chickadees.  We could hardly credit our senses, for it seemed as if the woods was a hopeless place for any living creature that morning.  But there before our eyes was a flock of these courageous birds hunting for food on the leeward sides of boles and branches left bare and black in the recent storm.  Their ting weights sent the snow in showers from the terminal twigs . . . " 

--Liberty Hyde Bailey, December 1903, Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets, The Chickadee