How it Started, November 2012
Feeding the chickadees out of my hand in winter is fun!
As a
Southerner from North Carolina and having moved to Indiana, PA, to teach at IUP
in 1976, I usually have not liked the winter weather here in the past, but now I
have something in winter to look forward to. In early Fall 2012, I met
with Ed Patterson, Director of Indiana County Parks and Trails, at a chance
meeting in Memorial Park in Indiana, PA, while I was eating my lunch. At
that time I told him my plan of "training" the chickadees to feed out of my hand
out at Blue Spruce County Park in late Fall and early Winter. So, with his
encouragement and support, I started the process of “training” the birds out at
Blue Spruce County Park in November 2012. For about a month going out
every day, I eventually had birds eating out of my hand, not just chickadees,
but also titmice and a nuthatch. At first I put sunflower seeds on two
stumps in the woods and stood about fifty feet away, close enough for the birds
to see me, but far enough away as not to be perceived as a threat. Each
day after putting seeds on the stumps, I moved to stand a step closer to the
stumps than the previous day. The birds continued to accept my presence,
so that after about a month I was standing between the two stumps right beside
me with the birds easily coming to the stumps right next to me.
Eventually, the birds would see me coming and would gather around the stumps.
At first I moved back some while they retrieved the seeds from the stumps.
Then I gradually stood closer and closer until I was right there at the stumps.
At that point I did not put seeds on the stumps but offered seeds in my hand.
Success! Now they fly around me and may land on my hat and shoulders as
soon as I enter the woods. Note the photos of the birds coming to my hand,
as well as others in December 2012. (I like what author Geneva "Gene" Stratton Porter said over a hundred years ago when she said "The greatest
thing possible to do with a bird is to win its confidence.")
The original idea for feeding birds out of my hand
at Blue Spruce Park was
stimulated by a trip with Margaret and Roger Higbee as we had the experience of
feeding the birds out of our hands
at LaSalle Park near Burlington, Canada, November 26, 2011.
Someone there had taken the time to get it started, so I wanted to do the same
here.
Since
that start in Blue Spruce Park in 2012, birds readily come down to my hand any time I go out to see them
during the winter. The good news is that the birds' acceptance of me is
transferable to other people. Many other people now go out to Blue Spruce to feed the
birds by hand, having learned about it through "word of mouth," no doubt not
knowing how it all started there. It appears now that the thresholds have been
surpassed for both the birds and people to keep it going from year to year - with each telling and
showing others their positive experiences.
Footnote
about nesting from Vinciane Despret in Living As A
Bird, 2019 (in English, 2022): Some birds "have been observed quietly living
together through the winter, flying in unison, seeking food together, sometimes
squabbling over apparently trivial matters, [but] somehow, at a given moment,
adopt a completely different attitude. From that point on, they isolate
themselves from other birds, select a particular place and confine themselves to
it, singing ceaselessly from one of their chosen promontories. Seemingly no
longer able to tolerate the presence of their fellow creatures, they furiously
devote all their energy to a frenzy of threats and attacks if any of these dares
to cross a line, invisible to our eyes, but which appears to represent a
remarkably well-defined border."
