Chickadee Lessons
Art: Jack Unruh
Winter is long and harsh at our cabin just off the back side of Park City’s Jupiter Peak. During summer, the surrounding forest is full of wildlife — moose, deer, coyotes, beaver, several varieties of squirrels and chipmunks, an occasional badger or bobcat and a plethora of birds. But once the snow falls, nearly all those retreat to more hospitable places or move underground.
In the three winters we’ve lived here, the inventory of wildlife who stay on is easy to keep: a bachelor Stellar’s jay, one lonely raven, a great horned owl we hear but don’t see, an ermine or two, a few snowshoe hares, a bobcat we know only by tracks left in the snow, and a small flock of chickadees.
Lessons from the wild come unpredictably packaged. So it is that the smallest most seemingly ill-equipped creature teaches me the most about wintering here. In spite of their dainty appearance and clownish demeanor, chickadees offer sage advice on how to survive a Wasatch winter. About the size of a golf ball with wings, chickadees are easily recognizable by their black cap and bib, white cheeks, almost constant chatter, acrobatic hops, quirky, undulating flight and the odd habit of hanging upside down while they eat. They nest in tree cavities, but will readily use manmade bird houses as well. Unlike most birds that migrate south for winter, chickadees stay put, never straying far from their birthplace. They have one of the most complex social structures and largest vocabulary of any songbird. In the Wasatch, we have both black-capped and mountain chickadees, the latter distinguished by a white eyebrow stripe.
Chickadees are, in a word, indomitable. The colder, more blustery the winter day, the more exuberantly they sing. Once winter sets in, the chickadees become partners with my family and me. They lend a touch of gladness and camaraderie to a bleak winter world. We welcome one another’s presence. We keep the bird feeder outside our window stocked with birdseed. The chickadees are so accustomed to us watching at the window that if we are still and quiet they will perch on our fingers and eat birdseed from our hands.
When it comes to food, chickadees are generalists. They’ll eat almost anything from seeds and berries to insects and bugs. But the main reason they are able to survive a long Wasatch winter is their organized food storage system combined with amazing memory. In autumn, chickadees gather seeds wherever they find them and then flit busily from branch to branch and tree to tree. They stash food in knotholes, under bark, between conifer needles, and anywhere else they can find. They may carry several seeds at once, but they store each seed in a different location. Then, when winter comes and food is scarce, they systematically revisit each storage place. Research has shown that chickadees even have the ability to remember which of the hundreds of stashes they’ve already visited: they don’t go back once they’ve taken the food from a particular hideaway.
From chickadees I’ve learned that surviving a Wasatch winter comes down to a few simple rules: Make the best of the place you live. Keep plenty of food stocked. Be nice to your neighbors. And, most of all, be happy.
A regular contributor to Park City magazine, Mark Menlove is still surviving Wasatch winters thanks to help from his chickadee friends.
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