Superbirds
It was minus 8 degrees this morning, but these beautiful, hardy little chickadees are briskly about their business. Such brave little birds.
What else can they do? Think how much they must have to eat to survive in these temps. They have no time to waste.
According to The Forest Unseen, chickadees have various adaptations to the cold. They grow 50% more feathers in winter (the original down jacket). They sometimes sleep huddled together in a “ball of birds.” And they search constantly for food with eyes that are lined with twice as many receptors as humans’:
On a winter day, the birds need up to 65,000 joules of energy to keep themselves alive. Half this energy is used to shiver. These abstract measures become more understandable when they are converted into the currency of bird food. A spider the size of a comma on this page contains just one joule. A spider that fits into a capitalized letter holds one hundred joules. A word-sized beetle has two hundred and fifty joules. An oily sunflower seed has more than one thousand joules…
One of the reasons we keep the feeders filled around here!
There’s something inspiring about these “common” little birds. If they can brave these cold days with every appearance of good cheer, so can I.
3 Comments
Joanne Schmidt
I live in rural mid-northern Ontario – it was 35 below Centigrade / 30 below Fahrenheit here this morning and there has been about 2 to 3 feet of snow covering the ground since January. We have chickadees at our patio door every morning since we started putting out sunflower seeds on the area we have shoveled on the deck – although it is still snow covered. They come in groups of three or four – pick up some seeds, and then fly away. We also have sparrows coming and eating for a few minutes. We aren’t using our feeders since the paths to them are deep in snow and it is difficult of keep the trays free of snow. Our cat doesn’t like going out in the snow and cold, but she really enjoys looking at her personal TV show – lying on the floor and looking through the patio door glass at her bird “friends” only a few inches from her face.
Janet
I’ve seen recipes around for different kinds of seed balls/seed “muffins” you can set out on a railing or something. Sounds like you are doing just fine with the “scatter” method, though!
35 below. Brr!
Margaret Mollick
Thank you for this beautiful post … I am forever amazed at the birds during winter – and I don’t live where winters are terribly cold or long!