Ever since I started buying mealworms to feed baby songbirds
and injured insectivores when I was rehabbing, I’ve been in the habit of offering some to my
neighborhood chickadees, who take them right out of my hand. Of all wild birds,
chickadees are the ones who most readily bridge the chasm between humans and
birds.
It’s not that chickadees are stupider or more trusting or less
genuinely wild than other species, or that they’re compliant or wimpy or even necessarily
friendly. Even after I’ve been feeding an individual chickadee for weeks or
months or years, it would never allow me to grab it. Chickadees are readily
tricked into being trapped in mist nets or special chickadee cage traps, but any
bird bander knows that when a chickadee is caught, it goes down fighting, determined
and clever about inflicting pain. Many birds are put into a dazed condition when
a bander holds them on their backs, and some get into such a panic by being
held at all that they become utterly defenseless. Some Blue Jays seem actually to
swoon in the hand.
Chickadees have far less strength and power than corvids,
yet from any position they bite, peck, and hammer their bill under fingernails and
into cuticles and knuckles, often drawing blood. A 150-pound bird bander weighs
more than 7,000 times the weight of a chickadee, but like Ahab stabbing the
White Whale over and over to his dying breath, a chickadee will rage,
rage against the dying of the light, and not go gentle into that good night.
So it seems paradoxical that chickadees are the birds that most
readily come of their own free will to our hands. I think the reason lies in their
intelligence and unique ability to particularize every single feature of their
environment. Just as they recognize each other as individuals, they recognize
specific trees and branches, and remember which are or will be perfect for
constructing roost and nest cavities. They remember each tiny crevice where
they’ve hidden food, returning precisely to these caches when they need. Of all
the windows in all the houses in my neighborhood, there is only one at which
chickadees gather and look inside and even tap on the glass, hoping to attract
one particular person’s attention. They don’t approach most people at all, but when
I’m outside, they recognize my face and voice, often gathering around me as if
asking, “Where’s the food?”
These chickadees are fundamentally wild and free. If I ever
once breached the trust of a chickadee by trying to grab it, it would easily
get away, its reaction time and quick movements making a mockery of mine. Long
before my clumsy hands could close in on it, it would have flown off, and it
would take weeks or months for me to regain its trust, if ever.
I can’t help
but wonder what my chickadees think of me. They look into my face and eyes a
lot. Do they recognize me as a living, possibly sentient fellow creature or a
mealworm-dispensing robot? Do they think I’m kind and benevolent, or rather
stupid and easily taken advantage of? Do they take pride in having tamed and
trained me? Am I considered a friend, a well-trained pet, or a peculiarly
unpredictable source of valuable food? It’s fun to speculate. But my human
intelligence, limited as it is by my species’ very nature, makes communication
impossible, so I’ll never know for sure.
