Ah, My Little Chickadee

After being told yesterday that what I’ve thought was a Junko for several years was actually a Black-Capped Chickadee, I was met this morning by Chickadees at Dawn when I went to Birdnote.

I was a little surprised to discover there’s actually a whole book, The Black-capped Chickadee – Behavioral ecology and natural history devoted to these small birds. Obviously I’m not the first person to notice them. Still, it’s highly unlikely I will ever read, much less purchase this particular book.

Though I originally started attracting birds to my garden as a natural way of controlling insects and of trying to make amends for my part in destroying wildlife habitat, now I feed them simply to see and hear them each day. A sack of bird feed a month seems a small price to pay for the beauty and joy they bring:

As common as grass,
as free as the air
lifting their wings,
black-capped chickadees
explode from the feeder,
fragments of nature
disappearing faster
than the human eye
can comprehend,
unwilling to pay
homage to any man,
even one bearing gifts.