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Hatchlings!
By Lauretta Young

I love my suet feeder in the summer. Some bird watchers don’t put out suet in the summer believing that there are plenty of protein foods for the insect eaters. Certainly my roses do have some aphids and I see some hatches of various flying insects over my ponds that the swallows scoop up. However, even with this bounty, the suet feeder is even more popular in June than in January.

Most of my summer visitors are harried parents trying to stuff the beaks of the ever-hungry hatchlings. We were delighted again this year to have a pair of Black Capped Chickadees nesting in our birdhouse on our deck. These fearless little urban birds chattered at us while we ate dinner outside, but nevertheless went about their family business of raising a brood of three young ones. As the chicks got bigger and bigger, we put our outdoor feral cat in the garage for a few days to allow the chicks to have the opportunity to learn to fly and hide before having the predator around. I don’t agree with the concept of outdoor cats, and all of the ones we have formally adopted are indoor only, but this particular cat adopted us and the best we can do is to lure him into the garage with a heated bed and food, and shut the door at night to keep him safe from coyotes, and shut the door when the hatchlings are on the ground.

This year, for the first time, we also had a pair of Berwick’s Wrens that successfully raised several young in another birdhouse. Both of these groups used the suet feeders to help feed the growing youngsters to the point that I often had to put out a new cake every day!

The delight and joy I got out of watching these hard-working parents and hungry young made it worth the trips to Pet Barn to get more suet. More recently we have enjoyed watching a juvenile Downy Woodpecker learn the ropes from his hard-working parents. He tried to climb up the pole from which the suet hung, only to find himself slipping down over and over. The parents, who are adept tree huggers, got beakfuls of suet to him and encouraged him to keep going after the prize. He eventually made it, but then was so exhausted he sat on the ground for several minutes resting. Thankfully the outdoor cat was snoozing on his warm bed in the garage.

Chickadee hatchling, photo ©2014 by Jeff Young

On a recent “walk and talk” meeting at work, in a corporate park in Lake Oswego, I saw a group of newly-hatched Chickadees. My co-worker and I stopped to watch as several of the juveniles did the typical bird “begging” behavior—rapid wing fluttering and vocalizations while following the adults around. This behavior apparently is irresistible to the parents, who must find it as adorable as I do. Hence they pick up bugs off the tree limbs to stuff into the still large beaks of the “babies.” My coworker had never noticed this before, and found her appreciation of the daily walk quite enhanced with this new discovery.

This photo is one of the newly hatched Chickadees in our yard. Note the fluffy, newly grown feathers which look very “pristine” since they aren’t worn down from flying or age. Also note the obviously large beak, which will morph over the next few weeks to the typical adult shape. At that point, in many birds, the newly hatched ones look very similar to the adult Chickadees. In other species, the coloration or final form take one to four years to develop. American Eagles are the best known example, not developing the white head until year four or five.

So look outside. Get a suet feeder and watch our many insect eaters enjoy your treat.

Lauretta Young MD is the Chief Medical Officer of Health Republic Insurance, and the Director of Medical Student Resiliency Program at OHSU. She also enjoys teaching people about the delights and joys of bird watching in Cedar Mill and beyond with her customized bird tour service. See portlandbirdwatching.com. For more of her husband’s photos go to www.flickr.com/photos/youngbirders.

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