We live on the edge of a decent sized woodlot with lots of woodpeckers and nuthatches and titmice and of course, the tiny chickadee. They are very fun birds to watch and learn from. They are year round residents and come to our feeders basically everyday.
Chickadees are a really easy bird to attract if they live in your area. They’ll eat virtually any seed, though I find they are partial to peanuts. You’ll see them come back all day long and take one seed/nut at a time. For a little bird you might think, they really pack it in! Only, chickadees are taking seeds for the hunger to come! they hide them in nooks and crannies all through the woods and unlike squirrels, they REMEMBER where they put them. It’s believed that chickadees can remember hundreds of their little cache spots. Other birds surely swipe them when they run across them.
Other birds listen to the chickadee’s alarm sound. Many people’s first bird they can identify by song is the Chickadee from their familiar “chicka-dee-dee-dee” call. The more “dees” the more urgent the threat.
Around here the chickadees favorite meal is a peanut out of the shell.
Here’s a quick video of Chickadee picking the perfect peanut.
We have Chickadees come to our bird bath to get a drink or take a bath. They are one of the first birds to check out every single new thing we put out in the yard. If we move a feeder, they go to it first, if we get a new feeder, first visit is always either chickadee or a tufted titmouse.
Here’s Chickadee taking a drink from the bird bath. This was recorded with GoPro.
I have hundreds of videos like this one with curious chickadee checking out the bird photo booth. It makes some noises from time to time and he gets very curious about it.
One interesting thing about the chickadee is that I’m really unsure of exactly how many we have around. We rarely see more than 2 at the same time, but it seems likely there are at least 2 pair in the area. It’s interesting that we don’t see them in multiples more regularly.
