One of the most common birds in the Piney Woods at our bird feeders year round and around our deer and turkey stands during hunting seasons is the Carolina Chickadee. It is impossible to miss these acrobatic, noisy birds. However, despite its robust call, chickadee, dee, dee, dee, it is one of our smallest birds and can be hard to see when it is foraging in heavy cover. A big chickadee is around 4 3/4 inches long. The sexes cannot be separated. They have black caps and bibs, white cheeks, grayish backs and light breasts and bellies with a bit of olive on the flanks. Here at our home on Cotile Lake northwest of Alexandria, the chickadees show up shortly after dawn and visit our feeders throughout the day, year round. Carolina Chickadees are cavity nesters using natural cavities in trees where branches have broken away from trunks and rotted out. They are suckers for bird houses but we've been here for seven years and have yet to have them use our several bird houses. Our lot is wooded with 40-50 year old pine, oak, and hickory and is about two acres in size, about the size for one chickadee family. So, we have plenty of potential natural nesting sites here. About the only places that Carolina Chickadees don't regularly occur in this region are the wooded cheniers along the Gulf coast. It is just too far for the little home body chickadees to fly 10-30 miles across the marsh to habitat that they would otherwise do very well, thank you. The chickadees do not migrate in the winter and remain in the area where they were born including older, heavily wooded urban areas. Our Carolina Chickadees are quite entertaining and find bird feeders soon after they are set up. Chickadees love sunflower seeds although their natural food is based on insects, especially caterpillars, and berries. They will often cache sunflower seeds; that is, they will visit a feeder several times over a short period of time removing individual seeds and hiding them under the bark under nearby trees and branches. At other times, they will fly a short distance from a feeder, hold a seed against a branch and peck the seed open. If you are very patient, you might even be able to train one or more chickadees to take sunflower seeds from your outstretched fingers. When there are several chickadees gathered together, watch them closely and you should see that there is a distinct "pecking order" with one being the boss who gets first choice at the feeder or bird bath, doesn't have to serve guard duty, and the best resting location during bad weather. But, regardless of the chickadee's rank, all of them have modified muscles that permit them to hang upside down and perform all sorts of acrobatic feats. Carolina Chickadees begin to nest in March in our area. They lay 4-6 eggs and fledgling chickadees start showing up at feeders in May. If conditions are suitable, chickadees may nest twice and, perhaps, even three times in a season. Needless to say, we would have chickadees all over the place if natural mortality did not reduce their numbers. Once Carolina Chickadees complete nesting for the year, they will assemble in small feeding flocks along with other native, migrant, and wintering songbirds. The chickadees are very vocal and, in addition to the almost chickadee-dee-dee-dee call, they sometimes utter a call that sounds like fee-bee-fee-bay. Occasionally, the "fee" is repeated several times and is the only indication that a chickadee is around. Birders always listen for the chickadee calls because they are often rewarded by finding a number of other interesting birds to add to their list of birds for the day. Most reports about chickadees refer to their habit of mobbing predators like snakes, cats, owls, hawks, etc. When a chickadee finds a predator, it will start calling in a shrill voice and will normally be joined by all chickadees and many other small songbirds in the area. They will flit around the predator, sometimes striking the animal. The predator usually leaves the area. Chickadees are especially outraged by screech-owls. Birders use this behavior to attract chickadees and other songbirds by imitating a screech-owl or playing a recording. There are seven species of chickadees in North America. The Carolina Chickadee is found from New Jersey to southern Kansas and south to Florida and Texas. The Carolina Chickadees' look-a-like cousins are the Black-capped Chickadees. They are found on the northern side of the Carolina Chickadees' natural range. Fortunately, none of us in the southern Piney W.woods needs to worry about trying to tell the two species apart. Chickadees belong to the family of birds called tits. They occur around the world in the northern hemisphere. We have two tits in our Piney Woods--the Carolina Chickadee and the Tufted Titmouse. The Tufted Titmouse is almost as conspicuous as the Carolina Chickadee but is very different in appearance being light bluish gray above and white below with a very distinct crest and brownish red flanks. The titmouse sounds a bit like a hoarse chickadee. You will almost always find titmice joining chickadees at your feeders. One interesting thing about both species is they will commonly come to window feeders providing up close and personal views. Jay V. Huner |
