Earning His Wings

Juvenile Black-capped Chickadee

We've had a new visitor at our feeders of late; new in a number of ways. He blundered in one morning, took a quick look around, then disappeared. Susan and I were unsure if we really saw a juvenile bird quite that young, yet so mobile, at the feeder.

Evidently this young Black-capped Chickadee liked what he saw—food and water—what's not to like?

 Since I had a full plate of things to do yesterday, I decided to chuck them all in hopes that he'd return, and I guessed correctly. In fact, he's a regular visitor and in spite of his ragged appearance, none of the other avian crowd seems to be afraid of him. (I'm using the male gender here because you can't really tell with chickadees to begin with, and it's less cumbersome than writing him/her or some other ungodly pronoun.)

His first fearful approaches have become fearless frolics. While he used to hesitantly come along with an adult bird, he now seems comfortable, if somewhat bumbling, doing it on his own.

Kids.