White Rock Wanderings: Chickadee meter over the top!

So, today we went to Campbell Valley Regional Park, legendary throughout the bird-savvy folk of White Rock for the place you can handfeed chickadees. My chickadee meter has been running pretty low lately, seeing as how I haven't gotten any birds but sparrows at my feeders. So we set out this morning with birdseed and warm clothes and a camera.

After a somewhat drawn-out excursion, we found the right place, where all the chickadees gather, and set to work. It would probably be an understatement to say that the chickadees didn't need much persuading. As soon as you stood near their bushes, and held out your hand, they would come chirping out, fluttering around you and seeing what you had to offer. The black-caps were a little bit more hesitant, but the chestnut-backs would just rush onto your hand with hardly any caution at all.

After hand-feeding a few chickadees, I decided to give a nuthatch call into the woods and see if anyone answered. Within seconds, a beautiful, tiny little red-breasted female came creeping into my peripheral vision, seeing what was up. She landed on my hand and took a seed, and flew off to hide it in the trees. She continued this for probably an hour, and was so friendly that I could move my hand around, sit down, face a different direction, and talk to random people on the trail, and she would just keep coming back, grabbing a seed, and stashing it in the trees (occasionally, she would get hungry and eat one on the spot). She also became fiercely territorial, and spent much of her time chasing the poor little chickadees away. The black-caps were terrified of her, which was funny, because who is afraid of a nuthatch? But they wouldn't come near me. The chestnut-backs, on the other hand, learned pretty quickly that she wasn't quite as scary when her mouth was full of food, and would wait until she had flown away and then quickly grab a seed from me and leave. It was amazing! I kept doing the nuthatch call, and she would look up at me curiously with her little black eyes. She landed on my head once or twice, too, and crept up my jeans to get to my hand. We had a really special hour together, and I bonded pretty strongly with her, whether or not she bonded with me.

Then, Andrew was getting bored, so we moved on, and I left a little pile of seed for my nuthatch friend. Finally, freed from nuthatch tyranny, the chickadees were able to eat as much as they wanted, and they mobbed me for seed. I stopped a few more times, but mostly I just walked slowly up the trail, a crowd of chickadees following me and eating seed out of my hands (I was feeding out of both my hands by now). You know the scene in Sleeping Beauty where the princess starts singing and all the little woodland creatures come out and land on her and follow her? I have always wanted to be able to do that. It was amazing. Chickadees were everywhere, and they were constantly landing on my head, and I could hear their little wings whirring through the air as they buzzed around me.