“Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee!!”

They cry as I hold my camera steady to at least get a chance of a photo of one of them at the feeder.

These little forest birds are fast; it’s for their own survival, they don’t like staying in one place for too long, unlike the red polls that love to sit in the feeder tray and stuff themselves.

Chickadees? They’re quite fun to watch. One will fly to a feeder, pick out just one sunflower seed, fly back to their favourite perch, then place that seed between their toes and start hammering at it almost like a woodpecker to get at the tasty morsel inside. (I promise I will post photos of that activity… when I get them!)

They’re smart too; they know when someone’s coming out to the bird feeder, and it doesn’t take them long to figure out (if a person does it often enough, that is) that the crazy human with that big long black thing they hold up to their face which makes a weird clicking noise isn’t much of a big deal, unlike an owl would be. They’ll even come and perch on your hand to eat straight from your hand if you have the patience to stand out and convince them to do so.

Chickadees that aren’t used to such attention tend to not stick around so close–or so long, as these two beauties did for me–and make life difficult for any amateur photographer who’s yet to learn the patience game. There’s been plenty of times when I snapped the shutter, had a check at the viewfinder and found that the bird had completely vanished! Or I just get a whir of wings at the corner of my shot…

Taken near Barrhead, AB, Canada on April 16, 2017, with my old Canon Rebel XS DSLR camera with a Canon EF 70-300 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM telephoto lens.