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Breakfast With the Dees

© Terrie Murray

My normal routine in the mornings is to make a cup of tea and report to my desk for the day's writing. After an hour or two of work, I take a break, toast an English muffin, and make another cup of tea. This morning, while my muffin was toasting and I was mentally going over the list of chores I need to complete before my in-laws come for dinner, I glanced out the kitchen window and caught site of a young black-capped chickadee fluttering in the apple tree. Very shortly, an adult came and stuffed something in the beak of the youngster, then flew away. Cute! Breakfast with the 'Dees! As I watched, I caught site of many more 'dee fledglings, and counted at least five, plus the two parents. They were all calling to each other in their quiet, Dee-family way. I was completely enchanted.

The two parents seemed to be concentrating on insects, rather than seeds, which as I understand it is fairly normal for the feeding of fledglings. They would fly down to the rosemary bush, or the butterfly bush, and hunt for tiny spiders or other bugs hidden in the leaves. Talk about natural pest control! I encouraged them to focus on the butterfly bush, and take care of whatever it is that seems to be eating the leaves, but I welcomed them to whatever they could find elsewhere. Once the whole family flew down to the birdbath, where they had beak-fulls of water to help wash those spiders down. Then they returned to the branches of the apple tree.

Most of the time the four fledglings stayed well apart from each other, and they kept moving around, hopping from branch to branch on still-unsteady wings. I don't know how the parents kept track of them, but they did. And each fledgling 'dee seemed to be getting an equal amount of breakfast. I tore myself away long enough to grab a digital camera to try to get a picture, but they were moving around too fast to really do the scene justice.

Although it was the 'dee family which had most of my attention, I couldn't help noticing that we also had families of house finches, house sparrows and Bewick's wrens feeding babies in the yard this morning. The recent hot weather we've had must have encouraged some of those youngsters to leave the nest, because they certainly weren't around last week when it was raining. I expect that the Western scrub-jays will be showing up with their babies soon, as well.

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