For the Birds: Deee, Deee Deees are calling you

Black-capped and Chestnut-backed
Photo by Christine Southwick

By Christine Southwick

Ask anyone to list some of their favorite birds, and chickadees will be on that list.

Black-capped Chickadees are acrobatic, feisty little birds, with distinct black and white faces, and often seem to look at you with intelligence, weighing whether it is necessary… or not, to fly away before finding that heaviest seed in the feeder. 

Chestnut-backed Chickadees, our other local chickadee, prefer dark coniferous forests and are only found on the West Coast. 

Their warm chestnut brown backs, dark brown caps coupled with their white cheeks make these active bug-gleaning little birds welcome additions to your wooded yard and feeders.

Sixty-five percent of their food is composed of spiders, caterpillars, scale insects, aphids, and wasp larvae and other insects. In the fall, they often store food for eating later.

Inquisitive and friendly, with their pleasant calls and dee-dee-dee alarms, both species of chickadees will be the first to find your new feeder and announce their find to the other neighborhood birds. 

In the winter, nuthatches, kinglets, and Downy Woodpeckers often tag along with chickadees because they know these non-migrating bundles of energy will find all the winter specials.

Black-capped Chickadee with prized seed
Photo by Christine Southwick

Black-capped Chickadees have the most complex social order of all our local birds. 

The dominant bird eats first, making it fun to watch as flock members dart out singly in order, from a branch, snatch the best seed, and then fly back to the cover of a nearby branch to open it. 

While they are pounding on their prizes, others dart, one after another. If you are lucky enough to watch a feeder where color-banded chickadees feed, you can see that they take turns in order.

Chestnut-backed Chickadees do not have this social arrangement so often several Chestnut-backed Chickadees will be on a feeder at the same time.

Black-capped eating blackberries (and probably spiders)
Photo by Elaine Chuang

Chickadees are the local watch birds. They are the first to sound the alarm "Predator!" The louder the "dee-dee-dees" there are at the end of their call, the more danger. Humans nearby rate an extra dee-dee. A Sharp-shinned Hawk gets four or five extra dee-dees, and every bird around hits the bushes, no questions asked.

Chestnut-backed cooling off (water is very important)
Photo by Craig Kerns

Chickadees, both the Black-capped, and the Northwest’s Chestnut-backed chickadees, being cavity nesters in suitable trees, will readily use nest boxes. 

Buy boxes with a 1 and 1/8” hole, place in or near a tree with a clear flight path to the opening, put some wood shavings in the bottom, and you will probably have a chickadee pair taking up housekeeping. 

The male brings food to his mate while she sits on the four to five eggs. He helps feed the young, and after the young move away, the bonded pair will stay, coming to your feeders.

See previous For the Birds columns here