The Bluebird Effect

by Julie Zickefoose

  As much as we try to spurn it, the starling hangs on to our structures and our way of life. With a gift for mimicry, it renders startling imitations of car alarms, barking dogs, yelling children, clanking machinery, and sundry birdsongs in its rapid-fire monologues. As much as I enjoy their songs and their portly presence on my lawn, I stop at allowing starlings to take over our flicker and purple martin nest boxes. I try to throw out their nesting material as soon as it appears. One spring I got lazy, and a pair of starlings went so far as to lay a clutch of pale blue eggs in the flicker house.

  Now, throwing nesting material out of a birdhouse is one thing, but throwing starling eggs out is tough. There’s life in each little capsule, and discarding eggs bothers me. Still, I told myself I’d do it. Right after I finished the laundry. I pinned the clothes up on the line, enjoying the fresh breeze and the rare, warm, early spring sunshine. The starling sang from a telephone wire overhead, whistling and barking, grunting and wheezing, the way starlings do. I loved listening to his ever-changing bird station.

  It was peaceful out there, just me, a basket of wet clothes, and the starling. Our toddler, Liam, was teetering on the edge of abandoning his afternoon nap, but I’d fought him down this time, and I had a couple of hours off-duty. He was napping. His bedroom window was right over my head. And I heard his voice. “Mommy? Mommy?”

  Ack! So much for downtime. But the soft, sweet voice had come from my right, from the pointed bill of the starling perched on the telephone wire. Mouth agape, I listened, smothering amazed laughter. As a little experiment, I called softly to him. “Mommy?” The starling paused, then answered, “Maa! Maa!” in Liam’s voice. My plans to toss his nest and pale blue eggs into the weeds evaporated on the spot.

  The talking starling and his mate raised five sooty nestlings in our flicker box. When they finally left the nest, I took the box down. I liked that starling, but we don’t need any more of them here. A starling comes around every spring, singing hopefully about the place, but he’s going to have to come up with something else to amaze me if he’s to get back in my flicker nest box. I keep glancing at the eaves, expecting a dew-spangled spider web that reads, “TERRIFIC!” or “RADIANT!” or “SOME STARLING!” to appear. Some people say the animals talk at midnight on Christmas Eve. I don’t know about that. Here, it happened about noon, on a sunny spring day.

  Chickadee

  Tough Tit

  I THINK OF CHICKADEES—Carolinas are the ones with which I’ve had the most experience—as tiny corvids. They’re like mini-jays, with much the same appetites, intelligence, boldness, and abilities—wrapped in tiny, fluffy packages. Chickadees are not necessarily as nice as they are cute. My friend the humorist Al Batt says he thanks God chickadees aren’t the size of hawks. Nobody would go outside. Open a nest box with an incubating chickadee, and it may hiss, then strike like a snake, hitting its beak against the nesting material with enough force to give you pause. My heart always races, and I jump, repeating the mantra, “It’s only a chickadee. It can’t really hurt you.” Offer it a finger, and it may give you a good bite before quitting the premises, though. Chickadees are scrappers.

  I began to awaken to the true nature of chickadees when I got a bright idea that turned out in practice to be a dumb one. I thought I might mount two nest boxes on the same pole, one atop the other. The top box had a one-inch hole, meant for chickadees, and the bottom box had a one-and-a-half-inch hole, intended for bluebirds. I thought I was a pretty slick nest box landlord when my plan unfolded perfectly. Carolina chickadees claimed the bottom box, and eastern bluebirds built a grass nest in the top one. The chickadees were building their moss nest while the bluebird was laying eggs just above. And one by one, the bluebird eggs disappeared as they were laid. Finally, I set up watch on the box and saw one of the chickadees disappear into the bluebird box, perhaps to make sure no more eggs had been laid.

  There wasn’t much left to do but remove the bluebird box, leave the chickadees undisputed rulers of their neighborhood, and relocate the bluebirds. Who’d have thought a sweet little chickadee would remove bluebird eggs? I thought back to several other occasions when I’d had mysterious egg disappearances in bluebird nest boxes. Since all my boxes are baffled with two-foot lengths of six-inch stovepipe, snakes and mammals could not be at fault. When a sprig or two of moss would appear in the pirated nest, I’d have a clue as to the perpetrator. (Carolina chickadees like to use green moss in their nest foundations.) In most cases, the chickadees never moved in; they just removed the bluebird eggs. It’s possible that chickadees remove eggs from the nest boxes they’re simply considering for takeover, or to lessen competition for food within their territories. Lesson learned. I’d make no more bird condos.

  It’s hard to say whether the behavior birds exhibit in artificial nest boxes (especially two mounted one right on top of the other) is a true reflection of what goes on in natural cavities, so I give chickadees the benefit of the doubt. They’re nowhere near the egg pirates that house wrens are, but it’s clear that they have the potential to be home wreckers—something few of us who are dazzled by their black-capped charm at our feeders might suspect.

  We put a box up in the orchard in 2005 just for Carolina chickadees. The entrance hole is only one inch across, which rules out anything but chickadees and house wrens as nesters. It stood empty that year, suffering the attempts of a downy woodpecker to hack into it, but on April 9, 2006, I was elated to find that the inside front of the box had been laboriously chipped away, making a three-quarter-inch-thick layer of fine splinters on the bottom of the box. Only a chickadee could have gained access to do this—a natural, albeit unnecessary excavating behavior. Over the wood splinters was laid a four-inch carpet of dry green moss. Atop the moss layer was a fine, buff mass of plant down, filamentous inner bark, and deer and rabbit hair—the softest bedding imaginable. I thought of the Jedd bird, in Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book, whose bed is: “the softest of beds in the world, it is said.”

  By April 24 the nest was complete, with a deep cup, almost a tunnel, of plant down, fur, and feathers cradling six rufous-flecked eggs. Female chickadees carefully cover their eggs with a flap of this soft bedding whenever they leave the box during the laying period, a bit of calculating behavior that I find quite endearing. It doubtless keeps the eggs warm, and it may also reduce egg destruction by house wrens.

  For the first couple of years that I had a nest box trail, in the early 1980s, I would check chickadee boxes and find no eggs, then be amazed to find a complete clutch of six or even seven eggs the very next day, already under incubation. I learned to feel gently down through the layers of fur and fiber for the smooth domes of the eggs. The cinnamon-speckled white eggs are so tiny and fragile that it’s easy to poke a hole in them with an errant fingernail—you really can’t be too careful. They’re much too small to handle safely with big, clumsy fingers. Looking for eggs, I’ve learned to peel the flap of fur away from the nest cup like a blanket, rather than risk breaking an egg by trying to feel for it. I find myself wondering how a bird weaves such a blanket with only a bill as a tool, and marveling.

  Though spring is my busiest season, with birding festivals and speaking engagements all around the country, I was particularly anxious to be home when the orchard chickadees hatched in early May 2006. I wanted to paint portraits of the chicks each day as they grew and developed. This series of nestling paintings is a self-guided, intermittent project I’ve been working on for years. I had done the math, and I knew this clutch of six eggs was due to hatch on Saturday, May 6, while we were working at a nature festival in West Virginia. We would get back late Sunday, and I knew I’d have to get with it the next morning in order to document as much of their lives as possible.

  Sure enough, the eggs are replaced by squirming pink flesh when I open the box on Monday morning. Oh, they are impossibly tiny. I am delighted to find one that looks as if it had hatched a day later than the others, so for the first session I take two—the tiniest one and a mediu
m-size chick. From the start, the smallest chick is active and vociferous, peeping loudly and standing up on its tarsometatarsi to beg. You’d better beg hard, I think. Does it know it is the runt? Does it know that its life depends on competing successfully with its larger siblings? Helpless to resist its nearly ultrasonic call, I dice up a small, tender mealworm and feed it with forceps. The older chick lies quietly. It is visibly larger and better filled out than its sibling, and it doesn’t peep or beg. On this first day, I paint both the smallest chick and a larger sibling, and trust that I’ve recorded a two-day-old and a three-day-old chick for my project.

  Chickadees hatch naked, and I am surprised to find no body down and only a small crown of down atop the head. Perhaps this is why the nest is the softest and warmest imaginable, why the chicks snuggle at the bottom of an eight-inch tunnel of feathers, fur, and plant fuzz. Birds hatching in open-cup nests are much downier; baby house finches, for instance, wear halos of bluish white head and body fuzz that cover them in their open nests like down comforters.

  As I draw the nestlings, I think about what it is that makes them chickadees. They are very round and compact, with short necks and cobby bodies. Something I notice on Day 4 is the strength and coordination of their feet. I’ve never lifted a nestling that young that clung so well to the nest material, and even took some with it. Of course, grown chickadees make their living by clinging and hanging upside down. Any flights they make are fairly short—flits, really—from tree to tree. Locomotion and foraging have much to do with the legs and feet in chickadees. I am amused to see the nestlings occasionally flipping over on their backs in the nest as they beg for food, and just as quickly righting themselves with their hefty legs.

  It is a stunning exercise, to be in on every day of a chickadee’s development. I put the chick in a little plastic tub lined with tissues, observe it carefully, and paint it from life. Then I return it to the nest, to take it out at the same time the next day. It changes so much from day to day that I can hardly believe it’s the same chick I had the day before. Unlike many other species I’ve worked with, this chick doesn’t peep or beg. When I suddenly sneeze, I say “Excuse me!” in a small voice, and its bill flies open. I guess I sound like a chickadee to it. I stuff four tender white mealworms into its gaping bill. By feeding my subjects abundant, age-appropriate food, I try to return the favor of their temporarily modeling for me.

  By May 11, it has turned windy, cold, and rainy, with the temperature dropping through the lower fifties by afternoon. It’s dogwood winter, as they say in West Virginia, cold laid over snow-white blossoms. I begin to worry about this brood. The weather forecast is for rain for the next six days. When I take the chick back to its nest, I feed as many of its siblings as will open their bills, then leave a stash of tender, newly molted white mealworms on the roof of the box for the adults to dole out. They accept my offering unhesitatingly. In anticipation of the cold spring rains that always seem to come when young birds are in the nest, I have laid in a supply of three thousand mealworms. I have a feeling I will be subsidizing a number of birds in the coming week. I do this by duct-taping plastic jar lids to the tops of the nest boxes and filling them with mealworms. The hard part of this painting project is worrying about my subjects, who become more precious to me with each passing day, as models and as individuals.

  I’m increasingly intrigued by the smallest chick, which apparently is mysteriously and profoundly retarded in its development. At ten days old, it is still naked, an anomaly among its rapidly feathering nestmates. Its wings look like a seven-day-old’s, but its body is the size of a five-day-old’s. It has no spinal or cervical feather tracts showing, and yet its wing feathers are bursting their sheaths. I wonder and worry what will happen to it when the other four are ready to fly. Most of all, I’m amazed that it has survived this long. It begs more aggressively than its nestmates, as if trying to make up for its obvious shortcomings by ingesting as much food as possible.

  I pass the next few days trotting out to replenish the mealworm cup and painting both normal and stunted nestlings. It rains steadily until May 17, when the temperature finally creeps into the upper sixties. By now, at Day 12, the normal chick I’m painting can perch on my finger. I take the runt in to paint at the same time, and it wraps its lilac-colored toes around its sibling’s leg. How sweet! Its siblings look like fully feathered, clown-lipped versions of their parents; this one looks like a six-day-old. What will become of it when they fledge?

  I have to stop my painting project when the chicks reach Day 13, because I risk frightening them from the nest before they’re ready to fly. I wonder and worry about the runt. Is it still growing, however slowly? On Day 17, I can no longer stand the suspense. Silently, I open the box, and, with one finger, I count chickadee heads deep in the fur-lined tunnel of their nest. All five are present and warm to the touch. I close the box and hope that they will fledge late, giving the runt time to catch up.

  On Day 23, the box stands empty, but the two fecal sacs still in the nest are soft and wet. I imagine they’re from the runt, doubtless the last to leave. I envision it hopping on the ground, its parents still tending it, until it is finally able to fly. How I wish I could know what finally became of it. If the parents’ dedication to its care continued after fledging, it had a good chance of finally becoming a chickadee. They’d pulled the brood through a soaking, cold week of dogwood winter, suffered my ministrations, and accepted my subsidy. I felt a part of them, happy that I’d contributed to their survival.

  Seeing chickadees flit back and forth for what seems like an endless succession of sunflower seeds and peanut bits at my feeders, I wonder how much they depend on winter feeding stations. A study of Carolina chickadees showed that fully 7 percent more birds survive the winter when they have access to feeders. Like many birds, chickadees split their diet down the middle in winter, half being vegetable, the other half insects and their eggs. In summer, 90 percent of their sustenance derives from invertebrates. I’ve watched a Carolina chickadee land on a twig and begin tearing at a large bullet-shaped, brown wad of leaves that I hadn’t even realized was a silkworm moth cocoon until the bird showed it to me. Faced with a large prey item like a pupa, a chickadee will hold it in its toes and tear off bits—the miniature hawk image, complete.

  In winter, Carolina chickadees are subordinate to the larger, stronger tufted titmice, which kick them out of their territories. The chickadees, in their turn, kick the smaller kinglets off their turf. It’s a tough world out there, and these tiny, fluffy, deceptively cute scraps of energy are built to survive in it.

  Barn Swallow

  Old Friends and Eggshells

  LITHE BIRDS of navy and rust, all wing and tapered tail, barn swallows seek out human-made structures for nesting, the bigger the better. Living cheek to jowl with barn swallows gives us the chance to appreciate their adaptability and ingenuity, should we choose to welcome them. Barn swallows inhabit my earliest childhood memories from my birthplace in South Dakota. I recall a salvo of alarm calls and the arrowlike swoop of birds overhead when I’d enter our garage. My parents left it open all summer so the barn swallows could nest there. Most people would deny them access, to keep them from dropping detritus on the cars, but my father loved them and encouraged them to nest in the rafters. Raised on a farm in Iowa, he missed country life, and I think nesting barn swallows brought a little, beautiful bit of it back for him.

  Recently, barn swallows have entered not only garages and barns but large home-improvement stores. And they’ve entered the collective human consciousness as birds of remarkable intelligence. In multiple, unrelated instances in the United States and Japan, barn swallows have learned to hover before the motion-activated electric eye units that open and close sliding glass doors in warehouses and “big box” home-improvement stores. When the doors open, the birds enter the protected interiors of the buildings to build and tend their nests, and exit to forage for flying insects in the same way. In a Home Depot in Maplewood, Minn
esota, barn swallows have returned every year since 2000, opening and closing the garden center doors at will by hovering directly in front of the infrared beam of the electric eye. One assistant manager who locked the doors earlier than usual one evening was beset by swallows who swooped at him and protested vociferously until he unlocked the doors again. The colony had increased beyond a dozen pairs by 2009. Chances are good that offspring of the original pioneers are now exploiting this predator-free environment, having learned from their parents how to gain access (and, perhaps, how to bully store employees into keeping a bird-friendly schedule).

  My family moved from South Dakota to a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas, and there were barn swallows in the garage on Wenonga Road. I remember sun hitting off the cement driveway, and the black, swooping fleurs-de-lis of swallows against a bright sky. Too soon, we moved to Virginia, where towering trees all but cut off our view of the sky, and I would spend the rest of my school years without barn swallows to watch.

  Throughout my childhood, though, on our yearly trips to Iowa to visit relatives, my favorite time of all was evening on my uncle’s farm near Hampton. We’d sit in Adirondack chairs as the Iowa sun, a defeated but still fierce orange ball, sank behind the grove. And we’d watch the barn swallows come out to catch flying insects in the low light, pumping smoothly over the lawn, arresting themselves in air with quick snaps of their bills, then resuming their tireless and ravishingly graceful flight. My aunt and uncle weren’t bird watchers, but they loved to watch swallows, and they made time in the evening just for that. Surrounded by family in the dying light, the mingled scent of corn pollen, cattle, and hogs rising around us, we sipped 7UP from jewel-toned aluminum tumblers, watching in silent reverence the almost supernatural grace of barn swallows. For a bird-worshiping child, it didn’t get any better than that. I hoped fervently that I’d live among swallows again someday.