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Escarpment Magaz ine Winter
2012
Winter’s Most Reliable Resident
BY RON REID
The powdered snow may be swirling, the biting wind
keening through the bare branches, but should the
storm relent only for a few minutes, you’ll catch a
flicker of motion out by your feeders. The chickadees
are back, as cheerful as ever, eager to refuel for the
long winter night ahead.
Black-capped chickadees are a study in understated
elegance. No gaudy colours for them – only a natty
black cap and matching bib, set off by crisp white
cheeks and muted pearl grey and buff on their trim
bodies. But perhaps they deserve a tiny scarlet maple
leaf on their breasts, for no bird is more widespread
across Canada, especially in the winter. And few
birds are as cleverly adapted for surviving winter con-
ditions as the chickadee that visits your feeder so many
times a day.
How do they manage to last out the frigid days of
deep winter? After all, most small birds flee south-
wards before the first frost whitens your lawn, unable
to pack enough fat onto their frames to survive the
cold. Some chickadees move southwards too, but
only young birds when local populations are high.
The adults tough it out with the rest of us, relying on a
proven arsenal of survival strategies.
Make sure you are never out of food.
Watch a chickadee as it busily flits about in the fall, or
even on mild winter days, and you will soon discover
that it is not eating all those oilseeds or peanuts it is
raiding from the feeder – it is hiding them! A sunflower
seed wedged under this bit of bark, a choice peanut
hidden under a patch of moss, maybe even a morsel
of suet stored away somewhere. This behavior is
called hoarding, and the remarkable part of this strat-
egy is that the chickadee can remember the location
of its food caches for at least 28 days. They seem to
also know which piece is where, for birds preferen-
tially seek out the richest foods on the coldest days,
when they need them most.
Of course, having regular access to bird feeders is a
great assist to chickadees in the winter months, so if a
squirrel or nuthatch has pirated the chickadee caches,
an alternative is close by. Keep in mind that the colder
the weather, the more energy your birds will need, so
don’t forget suet mixes in the colder months.
Seek shelter from the winter night.
Even the busiest chickadee has to take a break at
night. If heavy conifer cover is nearby, birds may find
a sheltered nook and fluff up their downy feathers for
maximum insulation. Or they will dive into a nesting
hole to escape the wind. Nature stores can also pro-
vide winter roosting boxes, or you can make your
own. Shaped like elongated nesting boxes, these
roosts have rows of dowels inside for perching, and
entrance holes located at the bottom to reduce heat
loss as much as possible.
Turn down the thermostat.
Perhaps the most amazing adaptation of chickadees
is their ability to slow down their metabolism and re-
duce their body temperature during the night. This
method of conserving energy is likely key to their sur-
vival. And this is no small adjustment – a chickadee
can lower its internal temperature by 10 to 12 de-
grees C from it daytime normal. At this point, we don’t
know if other winter birds such as woodpeckers or
nuthatches share this ability, or whether it is unique to
the chickadee.
As the winter sun begins to gain strength again in Feb-
ruary, the usual “chick-a-dee-dee” calls in your yard
are supplemented by a clear whistled “fee-bee” song,
sometimes claimed to sound like “spring-song”. Only
the males make this call, for it is the beginning of the
courting season. For me, the chickadee’s spring song
is one of the most welcome sounds of the year, for it
means that winter’s grip is broken, and soon we will
be welcoming the time of maple syrup and the spring
rush of birds.
Should a chickadee light on your finger, you’ll dis-
cover it is but a few ounces of fluff enlivened by a
saucy attitude. So if this marvelous little creature can
survive the worst of winter, outside, with no hint of cosy
fireplace or hand-knit mittens, who are we to moan
and groan about the dreadful cold? Put down the cof-
fee, layer up to your eyeballs, and out you go to make
sure those feeders are full! Your most reliable feather
friend is waiting for your help to make it through an-
other winter night.
|E|
Ron Reid is a Washago naturalist and birdfeeder. His wife Janet
Grand operates The Bird House Nature Company stores in down-
town Collingwood and Orillia, and at Barrie Cedar Point plaza.
escarpment
FEATHERED FRIENDS