There are birds that are still, for all that’s fucked up in nature right now, doing very well for themselves. And I have to wonder with all of them – are they doing too well for themselves? Are there supposed to be this many black-capped chickadees, or has the presence of colonizer-styled civilization caused them to multiply beyond the numbers they should have?
Like dark-eyed juncos, black-capped chickadees are ridiculously numerous. Then again, I’ve only been paying attention to birds since I’ve been living in Washington state. I get the impression this could be nationwide, that there could be black-capped chickadees from coast to coast, but crimbo decorations could give one the same idea about cardinals, and those are not where I live.
Also, regarding the numbers, something I haven’t talked about yet in these articles: Before the current woeful epoch, just how many animals were there? What were the numbers like? It’s easy to imagine without cars splattering bugs and larger animals everywhere they go, with less poison and plastic and pollution, with a more stable climate, there could’ve been a lot more creatures, everywhere and all the time. When a mummer gamboled through the streets of Saxony in 1586, how many storks were on those rooftops? Sparrows in the eaves? How many different species of bird would an observant person be able to see every day? In short, would it look like there are too many chickadees if there were more of everything else?
Black-capped chickadees do the famous chicka-dee-dee-dee song, which to my ears sounds more like tsickita-bee-bee-bee. They have a lot of other vocalizations, mostly variations on tsickita, but one always captures my attention. It sounds mournful, and it may be confirmation bias, but I feel like I’ve mostly heard it from chickadees far from a flock, alone in a tree, especially on a cold or wet day. That call sounds like oomp-pewee.
So basically, in an AU where the first chickadees observed were all depressed, they’d be called umpewees instead. The more u kno.
I saw a birding youtuber document one season worth of breeding by a pair of chickadees in a nest box, and boy howdy, these guys fuck. Seems like in a good year, a couple of chickadees could spit out a hundred. This is not as fast as mouse breeding, but it’s pretty damn prolific. This is why small predatory animals exist. Eat these guys up like some marshmallows. Pop ’em like skittles.
Some animals just look like a food. I think bushtits look more like a food than chickadees, but still… bite size. There are different types of cuteness and small birds like this are in that Hello Kitty territory, where the idea they’d have thoughts or feelings is less easy to imagine. Shut off your empathy; be like the mighty falcon; gobble ’em up.
Chickadees of all types are basically New World tits, so like, I once again had an excuse to say tits on an article. They have a black-cap and chin. You know what they look like. Don’t play the fool.
You know, I thought I’d have a lot more to say about black-capped chickadees, in part because there are so many of them, but I can call nothing more to mind, now that it’s time. Put out a feeder and you’ll see them. They should look familiar. If you’re norteamericano, they got yer ass surrounded.
–
Random fact – black-capped chickadees are the state bird of the state that I live in. They are indeed a common sight around here.
It’s an interesting question about how common different animals were when the environment was less heavily disrupted by human activity. Certainly there seem to be some species that thrive in human-altered environments whereas others struggle or can’t live there at all. I remember reading that the real cause of extinction for the famous passenger pigeons might have been habitat loss rather than overhunting. Passenger pigeons, in contrast to their urban relatives, only thrived in dense forests that had little human disturbance. As farmers cleared much of the forested land in the eastern US and Canada, there was less and less habitat suitable for a bird that needed large forested areas. Combine this with extensive hunting and it was enough to quickly drive a very abundant species to extinction.
I got curious once and discovered there were an estimated 30-60 million bison in the US before europeans. Today there are about 86 million cows.
weh, man. makes me say weh, like the lowliest of infants. insert “world is a fuck” meme here. wonder if we’ll ever get this shit right. i still, on a good day, think there is a very slim hope in hell people will realize there’s no hope in fascism and rally around making the world a better place. at that time, maybe we can move some mountains and save the weirdos. will there be any hope for de-extinction playing a role? rewilding for plains and buffalo?