Blog de Puree

The state bird of Massachusetts, the black-capped chickadee, has finally made an appearance in our yard.

Having never made an appearance at any of our feeders until yesterday, we think that the recent addition of our thistle feeder is what attracted it. Typically, the chickadee mostly eats insects but can be found to eat a variety of seeds and berries. We’ll be sure to put out a good variety so we can see it again.

The chickadee is a member of the titmouse bird family and they are often seen at feeders along with tufted titmouse. I’m hoping that if we can attract more chickadees, the titmouse will follow soon after.

Some cool chickadee facts from AllAboutBirds.com:

• The black-capped chickadee hides seeds and food for later recovery and can remember thousands of hiding places.
• The chickadees calls, while sounding simple, can be extremely complex in their tone and variation as they communicate identity, recognition, predator alarms and contact calls.
• Nonbreeding chickadees can be members of several flocks with different positions of dominance hierarchy.

The black-capped chickadee (Courtesy of birds.cornell.edu)

Here’s a finch update regarding Randye’s post about American goldfinches the other day:
We’ve now successfully attracted a charm of finches. There seems to be anywhere from 4 to 7 yellow birds flitting around the yard periodically throughout the day.