Stephen Jones / For the Camera
Stephen Jones / For the Camera
Other February Events
• A dozen or more golden eagle pairs lay their eggs on cliff ledges throughout the foothills and mountains. Young should hatch by late March.
• Rare geese have been showing up at area reservoirs, including a pink-footed goose and barnacle goose at Milavek Reservoir in Frederick.
• Look for vibrant pink spring beauties (Claytonia rosea) blooming in sunny foothills canyons.
We see these half-ounce balls of feathers dangling like Christmas ornaments from conifer boughs, hear their exuberant “dee-dee-dee” calls, and fall in love. People throughout the Northern Hemisphere have marveled at the zest for life exhibited by chickadees.
Cherokee elders described black-capped chickadees as bearers of truth and knowledge who could foretell the future. Contemporary naturalist Kathryn Armstrong characterized this species as one of America’s most optimistic birds:
“The happy sound of the ‘chick-a-dee-dee’ call resonates throughout our woods…[even] in the depths of winter when the birds have the heart and energy to serenade the world.”
We agreed with this sentiment until one February morning when we came upon two black-capped chickadees strafing each other overhead and pecking and clawing on the ground, apparently fighting to the death over a territorial boundary. A review of the scientific literature revealed that far from being idyllic, peaceful cooperatives, chickadee flocks are hierarchical associations where a few dominant males control many of the activities, including highly promiscuous sex.
As for cheerfully singing their way through winter, chickadees face mortal peril during the coldest nights. Even while huddling together in tree cavities, allowing their body temperature to drop a dozen degrees or more and shivering constantly, many individuals barely make it through.
If they don’t find food as soon as they arouse at dawn, they can die of hypothermia within hours. And the food, consisting largely of spiders, tiny caterpillars, and beetles gleaned from cones and tree bark, along with scarce fruits and seeds, requires an enormous amount of energy to find.
To fuel their bodies during winter nights, individuals may consume as much as forty percent of their body weight during the daytime. Caching food in knotholes, bark crevices, under leaves, or under the snow also helps them get through.
Chickadees dampened by drizzle prior to the arrival of an arctic cold front stand little chance. After banding black-capped chickadees on his farm in central Wisconsin during the 1940s, Aldo Leopold concluded that most young perish during their first winter of life.
Chickadees’ cheerful-sounding “chick-a-dee-dee” calls, warbled winter songs, high-pitched “see-see-see” notes, and mournful territorial “fee-bees” actually constitute a complex language essential to their survival. The “fee-bees” serve to attract a mate, while the nuanced calls bind the flock together and protect it from danger.
A particularly long and emphatic “dee-dee-dee” may signal the proximity of a dangerous northern pygmy-owl or Cooper’s hawk. Shorter and less insistent calls might describe a red-tailed hawk or human, since these larger predators are not as agile and thus pose less of a threat.
Nuthatches, brown creepers, kinglets, and woodpeckers seek out chickadee flocks in winter, perhaps because the chickadees warn of impending danger or because they provide safety in numbers. With the chickadees keeping an eye out for predators, the woodpeckers can hammer away at tree trunks without having to look over their shoulders. The holes they drill in the bark create foraging opportunities for the smaller birds, who also pick off fleeing insects.
Cheerful or not, chickadees are energetic, resourceful, and sometimes aggressive survivors who’ve learned how to maximize their ability to thrive in forest environments. Without them, many other bird species would struggle, and we would grow considerably more weary of winter.
Stephen Jones and Ruth Carol Cushman are authors of Wild Boulder County and The North American Prairie.