This mornings beaver news will be temporarily interrupted by feathers, but rumor is there will be an AMAZING update to follow. So stay tuned. I thought I’d talk today about Chickadees. These are the tiny, bright, tuxedo-wearing charmers that flitter through your trees and say their own names over and over again so they won’t forget. Here in the Bay Area we have the ‘chestnut backed chickadees’ but in the sierras they have ‘mountain chickadees’ and on the east coast ‘black capped chickadees’. They’re basically the same bird, weighing the same as three whole pennies with more spunk than you might expect from a disney film. In fact chickadees often surprise, which is what I like best about them.
A million years ago in the sierras we had cross country ski’d into a frozen lake that was a campground during the summer months, and now snow filled and abandoned. It had the hush of new fallen snow and the stiff green smell of interlaced firs in every direction. A lone visitor greeted us, twittering about, and we amused ourselves by tossing it crumbs from our snow-picnic. I suppose he had gotten brave with the steady stream of visitors in the summer, and missed the free handouts. He came closer and closer until I decided to try this:
What does it feel like to hold a chickadee? Well, I can only say that your spirit inextricably falls upwards until your hand suddenly seems to be the very heaviest part of your entire body. Mind you, I was holding my entire sandwich in my left hand, close to me, and the crumb in my right hand far from me. The chickadee was not impressed by my efforts to present a stable and unthreatening feeding platform, and he quickly tired of the crumb and landed directly on the sandwich itself
(It made me think of that unforgettable Far Side of the killer whales at sea world leaping up for their tiny reward fish from the hands of the trainer, and one wry whale comments, “I don’t know about you but next time I’m going for the WHOLE ENCHILADA!”)
And this belongs on a beaver website because? Well a few festivals back we ended up with a leftover bluebird box (created ironically by the wife of the cyber hero who started this website!) and the bird box came home with us and was installed on the back fence. Over the weekend our house seemed like chickadee central and I was trying to figure out why. Then yesterday Jon noticed them coming and going from the box where a couple has settled and is raising a suitably noise family.
Remember to keep an eye out for what neighbors your garden might have, and maybe you’ll get lucky enough to have a family whose very name is an onomatopoeia!
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Okay now you’ve all been patient for the big beaver finish! I received this just now from our own Cheryl Reynolds who was out looking for our beavers this morning.
So as I got to the footbridge a beaver was coming up to the bank hole and then went back downstream. When I got up to the bridge I realized it was mudding the beginnings (finally!) of a dam. I then went around to the farthest cut off tree stump to sit and wait. He came back down with lots of mud and then when he saw me he turned around. We know the yearlings don’t do that, they wouldn’t have been bothered by me. Big boy, sleek fur, lots of mud in mouth. I’m pretty sure it’s GQ, although it didn’t seem quite big enough, but you know how they look in the water compared to out. It was NOT a kit.
