A Welcome Wagon of Two Merry Chickadees

Photo Courtesy of Sharon Werenich

Chickadee Photo Art ©

Additional Information Below***

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Fortunately, it did not take long for the family member who recently returned to the north from Southern Climes to find a suitable home.

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In the mountains, well above the Mason-Dixon line, near a small friendly town we had strongly recommended, she had fallen in love with the area years ago when she and her late husband had been through there ~ and together they had stopped there many times before.

However it was also relatively not all that far from the place where they had lived previously before making the sojourn to the South, and so she felt comfortable with the area ~ and no matter how much we pleaded, she would move no further north.

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She has not ruled out another move, so perhaps someday she will venture even further north in the mountains. But she is quite content where she is for now.

In the meantime, in making the new house her home, she had noticed immediately a quite barren man-made arbor which had been placed over the sidewalk to the front door. Perhaps the former owners had made some sort of use of it but it was of no use to her and not in a place where she liked it anyway ~ and one of the first things she decided would be done there was to have it taken down.

When the moving truck arrived, right before our own arrival there to help mark boxes off the list and such, the movers quickly found the arbor blocked easy access to the front door and so by the time we arrived several minutes later, the arbor had already been taken down.

There was little snow on the ground that day, the temperature in the mid-thirties, and she quickly decided the arbor would go in the middle of the lovely landscaped backyard ~ on which she would hang some bird feeders. So the ugly old arbor became a thing of beauty and had a new purpose in quite a different way.

With her son-in-law's help, she moved it back there and managed to get it stationary in the ground. She had been talking excitedly about feeding the birds ever since she had arrived back here and was delighted that in an over-hanging tree branch ~ outside her door at the bed and breakfast where she had temporarily taken up residence ~ was a very intact Robin's nest which had lasted through the summer and autumn, storm after storm.

During the nearly decade away, she and her husband had lived in several areas in the South ~ and the last area, she sadly had reported, was mostly devoid of the birds she had known in the north.

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There had been only flocks and flocks upon flocks of noisy black birds which always fight among themselves ~ grackles ~ whether that is the correct name or not, that always is what we called them ~ which people there fed and which were known to eat either the young or eggs of birds such as Blue Jays and Cardinals.

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It was rare to hear a Cardinal or Blue Jay ~ and an even rarer event to actually see one ~ and it was the one and only place she had ever lived where she had never ventured to feed the wild birds.

When she had lived in the north, her husband and she had fed the birds sumptuously, even hand-mixing their own suet cakes from their own rich recipe ~ which brought in the winter beauties in droves.

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Through the summers, a guest would have to constantly duck their heads to avoid being hit by the outrageous numbers of hummingbirds buzzing to and fro ~ which they also fed.

At one point one winter, they placed corn out for a "poor hungry" Wild Turkey who had roosted in the woods in back of their home ~ and before long they had a "resident flock" of over one-hundred Wild Turkeys who were not leaving the immediate area while there was still corn.

It was a feeding pattern she and her husband did not repeat the next year, but it was quite a site to behold the year it went on.

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The now-huge flock of Wild Turkeys would roost in the woods near the edge of the yard and wait patiently for the next day's ample supply of corn ~ which she and her husband had begun storing in huge galvanized garbage cans in the garage, the flock-sized quantities of corn by then being delivered in the bed of a pick-up truck.

We had no doubt there was a serious dearth of Wild Turkeys for the hunters that year, as most Wild Turkeys in the area seemed to be content to stay close-by in the woods at the edge of their backyard ~ their home and property being in the middle of a strict no-hunting area, to be certain, as there were many other homes scattered throughout that particularly expansive woodland.

During a day of the most recent Arctic Clipper when the roads seemed decently maintained and the nearly constant snowfall was delayed, she ventured out for some supplies including a birdfeeder and seed.

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The next day, in the still bitter cold sub-freezing temperatures, she hung it on the arbor ~ now in the middle of the backyard ~ and filled the bird feeder with seed.

She said it probably would take the birds at least three or four days to find it even though ~ like her old home in the north ~ a large expanse of woods abuts the backyard.

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But the very next day ~ only one day after hanging it there ~ two lively Chickadees found it and happy little birds that they are, seemed quite delighted with their find.

They spent nearly the entire day there ~ and have been back with others in the early mornings ever since then ~ and she was probably even more delighted than they were at finding such a generous new source of food, as she had not seen any real Chickadees for such a long, long time. .

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***Try as we did to photograph the actual chickadees of this posting, they were never around when we were there and the weather prevented us from making earlier and more frequent trips to try and catch them. We finally were lucky enough to find the perfect photo above, taken by Sharon Werenich of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and received her generous permission to use it here. Sharon's website, just recently begun and still under construction, is appropriately named "Chickadee Photo Art", easily accessed by clicking here.

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Sharon's site is dedicated to the "Wonders of Nature" and she is a passionate advocate of humane no-kill animal shelters and wildlife rehabilitation (see her "About" page by clicking here). She offers any and all of her copyrighted photography for sale as high quality, lavishly proportioned five-inch by seven-inch notecards and/or posters. A generous portion of the proceeds from the sales go to one of her pet projects: the feeding and sheltering of feral cats, who fare less than well on their own during the harsh Canadian Prarie winters.

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She is quite a talented photographer and her new web site/blog is worth a look and periodic follow-ups as she goes through the tedious task (we know all about that here!) of building it.

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