If you were limited to one beverage for the rest of your life what would it be? As much as I enjoy the complexity of single malt scotch and am of the immutable belief that nothing hits the spot like a Coke when your cheeseburger deluxe is crying for companionship, the obvious answer is water.
If your survival turned on scotch or soda pop you wouldn’t last very long. And while beer and wine have their virtues they wouldn’t be your first thought if you found yourself in the middle of the Sahara without an oasis in sight.
What, I’ve sometimes wondered, would be the bird world’s equivalent of water? The one indispensible bird. The bird for all occasions. OK, perhaps I have too much time on my hands but humor me for a moment. If you had to pick one species to populate your feeders – I realize it would be a sad world but just the same – what would you choose? Think of this as a game, like Wordle, even though I’ve never played Wordle. My wife does, which is one of the reasons I haven’t seen much of her lately.
All of them have their selling points, even blue jays, the bullies of the feeder world. The Washington Post recently ran a story about the pecking order at backyard bird feeders. It was based on a Project Feeder Watch analysis of 100,000 bird interactions. Spoiler alert: the larger the bird the more respect they get at the feeder and the soil beneath them. Duh! Crows are at the top of the hierarchy with blue jays coming in fourth. More aggressively self-assertive than jays are grackles, red-bellied woodpeckers and starlings. Coming in last are chickadees.
Perhaps I’m a softy but every species that frequents my feeders, and that includes my suet feeder, have something to say for themselves. I enjoy the way juncos prance around beneath feeders waiting for falling seeds. They seem a cheerful species. Woodpeckers appear single-minded and, according to the study, dominate larger birds. “They punch above their weight because they spend their lives hammering on trees,” explained Eliot Miller, a Cornell University ornithologist.
As well as on the side of my house.
I don’t have a favorite woodpecker. Perhaps the crow-sized pileated Woody Woodpecker. But one has never frequented any of our feeders even though Cornell lists it as the tenth most dominant feeder bird in North America. Undoubtedly, a different part of North America than the one I inhabit. Given a choice between a feeder stocked with sunflower seeds and a dying tree filled with insects, of which we have an abundance, they’ll go for the caviar hidden behind the bark over store bought seed any day.
You obviously can’t beat a brilliant crimson male cardinal against a backdrop of freshly fallen snow. If you think cardinals get redder as winter progresses that’s not your imagination. They reach peak brilliance around now ahead of the spring breeding season. Their berry-rich diet contributes to their intense color.
I also enjoy the way other species of finches – goldfinches or purple finches among them – mob feeders, taking up residence, placidly feeding at the troth. Perhaps I recognize myself in them. Nonetheless, neither cardinals nor canary yellow goldfinch top my list.
Ditto a couple of the feeder world’s most common and busy birds – nuthatches and titmice. No disrespect meant, but I think of them as the seat fillers of the bird world. I have a different attitude towards chickadees, probably the most dependable visitor of all. It’s chickadees that I consider the bird world’s indispensible equivalent of water. I realize this claim may meet some resistance. Chickadees’ black-capped, white and gray plumage isn’t especially attention getting. But what they may lack in appearance they more than make up for in personality.
It may be hubris on my part, but I think our chickadees recognize me. They seem to appreciate how much I spend on bird seed – exclusively black oil sunflower seed, of which I’ve already gone through a half dozen forty-pound bags this fall and winter – and reciprocate my devotion by waiting at arm’s length as I refill the feeders. I’m reasonably confident that I could get them to eat out of my hand if I was willing to put in the time. Of all wild birds chickadees seem the most domesticated.
I suppose another way to put the question is what bird would you miss most if they didn’t return? I could live without nuthatches and titmice, as reliable as they are. But it’s chickadees, with their cheerful chickadee-dee-dee song, their curiosity and their feistiness that imbue northern winters with life.
Fun fact: chickadees hide their food to consume later and can remember thousands of hiding places. Every autumn the neurons containing that information die, replacing them with new neurons so they can remember where they left this season’s seeds.
I would mourn a world with only a single bird species. But if it were so the chickadee, hands down, would be my desert island companion.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
