Wild birds and tame

Tufted Titmouse

A hard, cold rain dissolved the snow that fell a few days earlier.  Now I am left with a gloomy, overcast sky and a fierce, biting wind.  In short, it’s not a great day for photography, which is why I’m posting a few photos from late last week.  They will have to do until the light improves.

I had a brief few hours of nearly warm weather before the rain arrived, which I used to quickly clean out the chicken pen and fill the bird feeders.  The chickens were suitably grateful.  Whenever I add new straw to the coop, no matter how I scatter it, they spend an hour or so fluffing and getting it just so.  I call it “rearranging the furniture” to suit their liking.  Afterwards, it looks the same to me as when I was done with it, but obviously my efforts don’t meet their exacting standards.  They aren’t happy with how I scatter the straw, so they have to re-do all my handiwork.

The feeder birds are less exacting. They are happy if the feeders are full, though sometimes the titmice and the chickadees toss seed out of the feeders until they get one they really like.  The chickens usually hop their way up 7-8 stairs to reach the back deck.  They clean up whatever the wild birds leave behind, leaving nothing for the squirrels.

Carolina Chickadee

Moon rising over mountain

If you’ve read yesterday’s blog post, you may remember I put a bit of a teaser in there about how several hundred feet of elevation change means that up here at the cabin I am seeing at least one bird species in my local patch that I’m apparently not supposed to be seeing.

That species is black-capped chickadee, one of the more common species I see. The reason I know I’m not supposed to be seeing it is because E-Bird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s bird sightings site, considers it a "rare" species in my county and always asks me to confirm the sighting. E-Bird thinks I’m only supposed to be seeing Carolina chickadees. And if I lived down off the mountain, E-Bird would be right.

Ten years ago, I had to go in search of Carolina chickadees. Black-capped chickadees ruled the area. Carolina chickadees weren’t far to the south of me, though. Then a few years passed, and Carolina chickadees were reported at Pinchot park, just about three miles south of me. So I went to the bird blind where they were and waited what seemed like an awful amount of time, sorting through lots of black-capped chickadees until I finally found a pair of the Carolina chickadees.

Then a few years ago, I saw the first Carolina chickadees at the cabin. The Carolinas were much in the minority at my feeders, but occasionally, perhaps once or twice a week, I’d see the little, grayer birds and added them to my yard list. Last year, I was even lucky enough to get a photo of the two species side by side.

This year at my feeders Carolina chickadees are more in evidence, if not quite even with the black-capped chickadees. And, I’m seeing birds that I believe are intergrades of the two. It’s starting to make me wonder how they can be called two different species, but that’s a discussion for a different day.

Anyway, research shows that Carolina chickadees are moving further north, but also suggests that where the two more or less overlap black-capped chickadees do better at higher altitudes. So here up on Roundtop, the black-capped chickadee is still a common sight, but given the spread of the Carolina chickadees, I wonder how much longer that will remain true.