For the Birds: Black-capped Chickadees—The Up-side Down feisty Ones

By Christine Southwick

Photos by Christine Southwick

Ask anyone to list their favorite birds, and Black-capped Chickadee will be included.

These acrobatic, feisty little birds with their pleasant calls and dee-dee-dee alarms, have distinct black and white faces, and often seem to look at you with intelligence, weighing whether it is necessary, or not, to fly away before finding the heaviest seed available. 

Black-capped Chickadees have the most complex social order of all our local feeder birds. The dominant bird eats first, making it fun to watch as flock members dart out singly from a branch, snatch the best seed, and then fly back to the cover of a nearby branch to open it. While they are pounding on their prizes, others dart, one after another. If you are lucky enough to watch a feeder where color-banded chickadees feed, you can see that they take turns in order.

Inquisitive and friendly, chickadees will be the first to find your new feeder, and announce their find to the other neighborhood birds. In the winter, nuthatches, kinglets, and Downy Woodpeckers often tag along with chickadees because they know these non-migrating bundles of energy will find all the winter specials.

Chickadees are the local watch birds. They are the first to sound the alarm "Predator!" The more loud "dee-dee-dees" there are at the end of their call, the more danger. Humans nearby rate an extra dee-dee. A Sharp-shinned Hawk gets four or five extra dee-dees, and every bird around hits the bushes, no questions asked.

Want these up-side-down bug seekers in your yard? Serve black oil sunflower seeds—shelled or unshelled. Have another feeder of high quality seeds, and/or suet, and you will have chickadee visitors. If you add flowering current shrubs, trees like serviceberries, dogwood, or small crabapples, and some evergreen trees, plus year-round water, and you will have resident black-capped chickadees.

Chickadees will readily use nest boxes with 1 1/8 inch holes and some wood chips within. The male feeds the female while she sits on her four to five eggs, and he helps feed the fledglings. While the young will fly away, the bonded pair will stay in your yard, and usually will raise a brood year after year.

Welcome birds, like these cute Black-capped Chickadees to control your bugs. You will be pleased and entertained at the same time, while helping to make the earth healthier by not using manufactured pesticides.

For previous For the Birds columns, click the link under the Features section on the main webpage.