Good cheer...

Black-capped Chickadee by Mia McPherson, On the Wing Photography

…in an irresistible package

It’s a grey November morning and I am feeling a little dispirited. I do my outdoor chores on autopilot, barely taking notice of my surroundings. As I hang up my bird feeder, I hear a soft tseet above my head. I look up into pine boughs that are festooned with small round baubles—each sporting a tiny bill and bright dark eyes. I am in the midst of a Black-capped Chickadee flock, and within seconds the birds are in motion. One lands directly overhead and peers at me confidingly. Another drops to the base of a bush, mere inches from my feet. They revolve around me—curious, unafraid—waiting for me to step back before descending to the feeder to snatch sunflower seeds. I watch them for a few more moments, my mood lightened by these feathered puffs of sprightly good cheer, before heading back toward my house.

Chickadees are among our best-known birds. And whereas familiarity sometimes breeds indifference, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy seeing a chickadee. Their cuteness is indisputable, their tameness is notable, and their chick-a-dee dee call is unmistakable. And yet, this familiar bird is so much more than the adorable feathered package that greets our winter-weary eyes.

Weighing as little as a pencil, the diminutive Black-capped Chickadee nevertheless has an exceptional spatial memory that allows it to relocate thousands of cached food items—seeds and insects. Incredibly, the bird’s hippocampus—the part of the brain that involves spatial memory—grows larger in the fall, facilitating cache storing and finding, then shrinks again in the spring, when food is more abundant and caching is less important.

The bird’s trademark call conveys vital information—and both fellow chickadees and other birds take notice. The greater the frequency of calls and the greater the number of dee notes following the initial chick-a-dee, the higher the threat level posed by a nearby predator. After the breeding season, Black-capped Chickadees often form mixed-species flocks with nuthatches, woodpeckers, kinglets, and creepers. The chickadees are the nucleus of the flock, alerting it to predators, leading the group’s movements, and facilitating flock cohesion. If you hear chickadees in the woods in winter, you’re likely to find a woodpecker or nuthatch nearby.

People are drawn to chickadees too, and the birds engender general goodwill. But if anyone had a reason to quibble with a chickadee, it might be me. I don’t know of anyone else who can blame a Black-capped Chickadee for one of their most memorable work blunders. Years ago, I was part of a team that was researching avian populations by trapping birds in an Arizona forest and marking them with identifying leg bands. We would set up numerous mist nets—long, nearly invisible mesh nets into which unwitting birds would fly and become entangled. We’d then patrol the nets, untangle the birds, place each one into a cloth bag, then carry our haul back to a central banding location. After gently removing each bird from its bag, we would take measurements, affix a uniquely numbered band to one of its legs, then release our captive. Since we often banded a bird that another team member had removed from a net, we sometimes didn’t know what kind of bird we’d find when we blindly put our hand into the bag to extract its occupant. We might find ourselves with a sharp-billed woodpecker or a delicate warbler, a dusky junco or a cryptic thrush.

On one of my first trapping days, I reached into a bag, closed my hand over a tiny puff of feathers, and withdrew the bird. The black-capped cotton ball that emerged—with its black-button eyes, stubby bill, and fluffed-up head feathers—was so adorable that I think I gasped. Astonished by the first Black-capped Chickadee I had ever held, I inadvertently loosened my grip the tiniest fraction. With a squirm and a flutter, the chickadee sprang from my hand and disappeared into the undergrowth. It is not uncommon for banders to accidentally release a struggling bird, but I know of no other who did so because they were startled by a feisty mite’s over-the-top cuteness. Though I will forever laugh at myself for my long-ago blunder, I know that I won’t ever stop being surprised and delighted by the irrepressible, irresistible chickadee—and doubtless will react accordingly.

Take a small step to help birds

It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of habitat destruction and disappearing wildlife. But according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, over 96 million people in North America watch birds. If each of us does something to help them, we may be able to reverse declining bird numbers.

Here are a few things you can do:

1. Keep outdoor lighting to a minimum to help wildlife. If you plan to have Christmas lights on outside your home, consider putting them on a timer and turning them off by 10 pm to minimize the disturbance to wildlife.

2. Water is a hot commodity in the frozen north during the winter. If you have a bird bath, clean it daily and use a bird-bath heater to keep the water from freezing. You will be rewarded with wonderful bird sightings.

3. Participate in the Christmas Bird Count—the world’s longest-running and best-known wildlife census. Data collected from one-day bird counts, which are conducted throughout the western hemisphere on designated days during a three-week period bracketing Christmas, provide vital information that is used by scientists and wildlife managers. If you’re new to birds, you can participate in this important event by accompanying more experienced birders into the field.

4. ‘Tis the season. Consider making a donation to a bird conservation organization. Many of these groups do tremendous work to help our birdlife. My favorite organizations are the American Bird Conservancy and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Local bird groups (mine is the Bitterroot Bird Alliance) also do a world of good and can always use extra support.

Thank you for reading and thanks for all you do to help birds!

Until next time …

Black-capped Chickadee captured at Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, near Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo by ASI.

P.S. To read about challenges that I faced more successfully as a wildlife biologist than resisting a chickadee’s charms, check out my new book Feather Trails—A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds! Or share the book with a bird-loving friend this holiday season.