Cisco Sonar

Chickadees

By Bryce Neilson

As I have grown older and lazier, I find myself sitting in
the house more.  With the Covid thing, hanging around the house is now acceptable.  One thing I enjoy is to my bird feeder right next to my living room window.  It has been there for 40 + years and over that period I have watched thousands of birds come and go.

   My overall favorite is chickadees, the Black Capped and Mountain species.  They are called chickadees because of their calls, chicka-dee-dee-dee.  When you hear it, it means something is bothering them and it signifies an alarm for other birds and animals. 

 The black capped show up first in the fall, however they can be seen any time of year.  They are the most common with small flocks in the winter.  You don’t seem the often in the summer as they are nesting and feeding their young insects.  As winter approaches the mountain chickadees, distinguished by a black stipe on their face, come down from the forest for food.  You can never really tell how many birds are at the feeder because they come and go so rapidly.  Since the sexes are impossible to distinguish, you can’t keep track of the individual birds. I feed black sunflower seeds and peanut butter because they are rich with protein.  These small birds may eat up to 35% of their body weight daily. 

The chickadees are cachers.  They take seeds as fast as they can and “cache” them everywhere to ensure they will have something to eat later when food gets scarce.  Ornithologists have learned that chickadees not only remember where they hide seeds, but also what caches they have already eaten, what have been eaten by other animals and which ones have their preferred foods. They can remember for over a month after caching and when spring comes, their brains automatically erase all the information and start over in the fall.  In the sprig, I notice black sunflower plants coming up in the strangest spots.

 It amazes me how tiny black and white birds can bring me so much pleasure observing them, but they do.