When a chickadee came to my birdfeeder the other day, I was
ecstatic. I had been waiting a long time — 25 years — to see one on our
property in Florida.
Of all the birds I love — and there are many — the humble
chickadee holds a special spot in my heart. My fondness for this feathered
flier goes back to my days on Cape Cod shortly after my husband and I began
sharing our lives together.
In the early 1970s, we lived at an old farmhouse in Orleans,
MA. Although the two-story wood-shingled structure had been in Ralph’s family
for generations, we were the first in a long time to live there year round.
It was an easy life in those days. We worked just enough to
pay for the few items we needed. We had few responsibilities and even fewer
cares. Ralph focused his attention on tending and expanding the already lush
gardens that dotted the property while I read one classical novel after another
from the amazing literary collection that filled every nook and cranny — and
there were many — in the wood-frame house.
One summer, after working my way through several Dickens and
Henry James novels, I took a break from books to concentrate on birds. Several
acres of woods surrounded the farmhouse. Birds constantly flitted from tree to
tree. Although I knew little about birds when I first arrived on the Cape, my
knowledge expanded day by day. Before long, I could distinguish different
species by the way they looked, how they flew, the songs they sang and the type
of nests they built. While my passion for observing nature didn’t exactly begin
on those lazy summer days, the hours I spent walking through the oak and locust
tree woods fanned the flames of my burgeoning flora and fauna fascination.
Of all the birds I saw during that period of my life, the
one that I most enjoyed watching was the little black-capped chickadee. The
chickadee is a chipper bird with an easily recognizable call and distinctive
features. Its bold nature and fearlessness always impressed me. I admired its
curiosity. Like the much larger Florida scrub jay, the little chickadee is not
shy of people. The small songbird — tinier than a sparrow — will even land on
the outstretched hand of a person offering seeds.
I wanted to be that person.
I spent hours that summer perched on a chair outside the
farmhouse’s back door where I sat very still and quietly, my outstretched hand
filled with sunflower seeds. I don’t recall how many days it took before I
gained the birds’ trust but eventually, I did. At some point during that summer
of my early 20’s, nature believed in me. Birds ate out of my hand and I was
ecstatic.
Fast forward 40-plus years. Instead of living on Cape Cod,
my home is in central Florida where my husband Ralph and I have worked hard to
create a semi-tropical oasis that’s not only beautiful to look at but a haven
for wildlife. For the most part, we’ve succeeded. Our once-barren land is now
lush and green, and we share it with a wide range of critters. But until
recently, chickadees hadn’t discovered us.
Now they have.
Two chickadees came to the birdfeeder that a pair of
cardinals believes it owns. Instead of being black-capped chickadees like the
ones I fed in Massachusetts, these southern songbirds are Carolina chickadees,
a name given to them by John James Audubon during his time in South Carolina.
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| A Carolina chickadee and male cardinal separated by a wall of sunflower seeds |
About an inch smaller and a tenth of an ounce lighter than
their northern cousins, both species share similar traits and behaviors. They
are cute, friendly and curious songbirds that will stop by a birdfeeder for a
quick snack of sunflower seeds or suet in between regular meals of insects,
spiders, berries or seeds. Chickadees are cavity-nesting birds that seek out
mixed forests and open woods.
Maybe that’s why they are here. With the recent loss of many
pine trees, our property is now peppered with snags — dead trees deliberately
left standing to attract wildlife. Maybe we’ve finally created the habitat
chickadees require.
Whatever the reason, they finally arrived, and I’m delighted
they’re here. When I was still living on Cape Cod and feeding black-capped
chickadees from my outstretched hand, I wrote a song about the cheery little
visitors that gave me their trust. As I look out my kitchen window now and
watch the southern version of that familiar bird steal a seed away from a
possessive cardinal, one line of that long-ago song runs through my mind:
“Other birds have sweeter songs with fancy melodies, but my
chickadee’s a friendly bird and that’s enough for me.”
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