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February 01, 2007  Parus Hiltons Purists might take umbrage at the use of “Parus” in the column title, but this week’s column is about chickadee boxes, and I cite poetic license as my excuse. Black-capped chickadees and Mountain chickadees were once known respectively as parus atricapilla and parus gambeli; both have now been changed to poecile. This name change reflects the accuracy and resultant adjustments that DNA now allows. Poecile Hiltons just does not have the same ring though, so I’ve used Parus. Now back to this week’s topic - birdhouses built just for Chickadees. Several days ago, I gazed pensively out the window in the direction of the feeders and noticed a Black-capped Chickadee fly to the entrance of one of the two dozen boxes hanging on the shed wall. Later that same day, while looking out my bedroom window I noticed a Mountain Chickadee fly to a natural trunk box placed on a stump. When another Chickadee tried to approach the box, the first house hunter pounced on the intruder and drove it off. There was no doubt about it, though it was only the end of January, Chickadees were beginning to seriously scout out nest locations for this year’s breeding season. The longer daylight hours and recent Chickadees-at-boxes sightings had an immediate effect on me. That afternoon I looked through my pile of nest boxes and found those that would appeal to Chickadees. I scattered these about the yard until I had placed about half a dozen Chickadee boxes on stumps and trees, most within sight of the windows. But still I wasn’t pleased. All of the boxes were acceptable to Chickadees, but none of the boxes reflected a design element that came to me over the winter. So what were my old boxes lacking? To answer that I must go back a bit. Over the last few years I’ve discovered several Black-capped Chickadee nests. The interesting thing about these nests is that none were man-made boxes. They were all excavated by the Chickadees and could be used to divine what it was that a chickadee wanted in a nesting hole. First of all, height of the nest hole from the ground was a factor. One hole was 12 inches from the ground. One was 3 feet above ground, and yet another was about four feet. From this I deduced they like fairly low nests. Entrance holes were very small but that was something of which I was well aware. A Chickadee can fit into a hole that is 1.25 inches in diameter. But one thing surprised me the most and made me rethink my old Chickadee box designs. Before going further though, I must first confess that no Black-capped Chickadee’s have ever nested in any of my man-made nest boxes. Mountain Chickadees are more forgiving and several have taken to, and raised broods in a number of my boxes. But, in typical human nature fashion I’ve fixated, not on my Mountain Chickadee successes, but only on my Black-capped Chickadee failures. You can now see why the bird built Chickadee nests were so interesting and important to me. So what staggering lesson did the Chickadee-built nests teach? Hole placement! All the bird built nests had holes in the tops of the dead tree stumps! So here’s my plan. I will create bird boxes with holes in the top rather than on the front side. This of course will create problems that I can neither overcome nor slough off. The first obvious problem is that an upward facing hole allows rain to fall into the nest. My solution … design a porch affair over the top of the stump. Perhaps a piece of attached tin that stands tall enough over the entrance so that birds can enter. Another problem will be the entrance hole. With Chickadee created nest holes there is a natural rough side of the stump that provides footing so the bird can clamber upwards and downwards. A typically built box would provide no such “ladder,” so I will situate the hole adjacent to the front of the box and provide a very rough inner board to facilitate climbing in and out. To further imitate the wild Chickadee nests I will place my creations on a short stick or metal rod driven into the ground. This would eliminate the need to find and attach the box to a suitable stump and perhaps, being remote from such clumps of brush might give the nest the advantage of being away from squirrel, mice and such. Again today I passed a natural Chickadee box that was used for two years by Black-capped Chickadees and marveled I at its simplicity. The Chickadees bored a hole into the punky top of a poplar stump that had been chewed off by a beaver some years ago. Once into the top of the stump the birds pulled away woody material until they created a natural nest cavity. The bark provided secure walls and the chewed off top, minus the tiny entrance hole, provided the umbrella over the nest. There’s no doubt - nature does it best - but that doesn’t stop us well-meaning bird helpers from trotting out our own offerings. Put ‘em up and let the birds sort ‘em out, I say. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
