Consider the Pickidees
One of the sad things about growing up is that no one really asks you what your favorite _____ is anymore. Childhood is full of these: favorite color, favorite book, favorite show, favorite animal, favorite ice cream, etc. It was very important to know these once upon a time. I remember in elementary school, probably 4th grade, each student had “their week” and one of the primary things that meant aside from picking a hymn we’d sing (Lutheran elementary school) or a snack to bring, was a bulletin board of favorites. Unfortunately, other than group ice breakers, you don’t get asked your favorites when you’re a 30-year-old lawyer. It’s a shame, so I am going to unprompted blog about a favorite bird.
Note I said “a” favorite bird because I have several and I can’t really think of any I don’t like.(1) If the Tickler from Game of Thrones put a rat in a bucket against my stomach with a torch underneath and demanded to know my one favorite bird, I would probably scream “peregrine falcon!” (and then the Tickler would keep torturing me because he never was particularly interested in truth). But I digress. “Penguin” would also be up there, though I can’t really narrow it down to a type. (emperor? Too normie?) But I want to talk about my other co-favorite: the black-capped chickadee.
As perhaps you can tell, I like birds. I’m not a “birdwatcher” per se; more of a backyard birder, though I will turn my car around and pull out my binoculars if see a cool hawk. Though I have a couple guidebooks, I typically only can describe “a brown one with black stripes” or call a downy woodpecker a red-belly woodpecker(2). But for some reason I latched onto black capped chickadees early. I’ve owned for 24-26 years a 4x6 picture of a black-capped chickadee; I don’t know if I like chickadees because I have this picture or I have this picture because I like chickadees. I did not take this picture and it’s not especially beautiful or well-shot. But this picture (pictured at the end) has just hung around for over two decades and multiple moves and is framed in my office.
So I am absolutely delighted that they are the No. 1 most common bird on my bird feeders at my current apartment. I have a ton of them; for every two cardinals, 3 titmouses(titmice?), .5 pigeons, and .25 hummingbirds I see, I have 10 black capped chickadees. Which touches on something weird about listing them as a favorite bird (and writing a whole blog about them): they are really common. They’re a super normal bird. Penguins live in harsh climates, are flightless, and walk upright; they are unique and special from their avian class-mates. Peregrine falcons are the fastest animal on earth and are urban birds. Meanwhile chickadees are just a simple backyard bird. They don’t even have a particularly pleasant chirp. The National Audubon Society lists their conservation status as “Widespread and common, and numbers apparently stable, possibly increasing in some areas.” Which in this age of climate change and habitat loss where we should be careful and caring about a lot of animals, I take to mean “Yeah, the chickadees are fine.” It’s kinda like if someone asked you your favorite plant and you said “grass.”
But you have to admit they are really cute. They are very appropriately named, they have a perfect little black head, plus white stripe cheeks(3) and a black chin. They are shaped just like you think a bird should be and are basically the quintessential backyard bird. They are often borbs.(4) I think I like birds in general and chickadees in particular because they are both normal and special. They are all around, whether a city pigeon or desert cactus wren; I haven’t been to a place with 0 birds.(5) But to be utterly obvious, they don’t move like us mammals and flight gives them a whole different world. Everything is near constant motion; head up-right-center, branch-tree-feeder-ground-feeder-branch-away. Which is what makes backyard birds fun; you’re attracting something common yet foreign.
And I really like MY chickadees, which I just nicknamed today “Picki-dees” which in turn prompted this weird blog. There is no other word for it, my chickadees are picky. They reject 3-4 seeds for every one they eat. They toss it away with such vehemence as if its distasteful that such seeds exist and are in their $20 feeder, often bouncing it off my squirrel baffle with a tiny bang. The squirrels love my chickadees too because of all the waste. I feed the chickadees and the chickadees feed the squirrels I suppose. In addition to being picky, my chickadees are demanding and impatient. Like prisoners rubbing their metal cup against the cell bars, the birds make it clear when the feeder is empty by audibly pecking at the feeders and feeder pole and arms. It’s so personal and specific. I’m not naïve enough to think that these little birds with a brain the size of a pea are asking ME to fill their feeders or that they’re even trying to make something happen by their pecking. But it’s amusing and interesting that they are somehow and for some reason reacting to food not being where they are expecting it to be in a way I understand. You might say “Come on Connor, they’re birds, they’re pecking at the edge of the feeder or metal post like they’d peck at a tree. You’re just connecting something you sometimes observe and extrapolating beyond.” But I will tell you dear reader that when I came out to the porch to read(6) tonight, the chickadees were tap-tapping away at the empty feeder and posts. In the hour since I filled their feeder and have been writing: no tapping, just the throwing.
Despite the self-deprecation, I’m not really abashed to write a blog about a little common bird because think it’s good to find joy in normal mundane things. I really benefit from separating from the normal flow of life, whether that be at the end of week or the middle of a day. I think we all do. There’s a lot to focus on; both the necessary (job, family, food) and the fun (movies, weekend plans, softball game, bachelor party). I am far from the first to think about “disconnecting” as a useful therapeutic tool, but I see that we often think of this as taking big or at least purposeful actions, such as going on vacation or trying a new restaurant or food. “I need to recharge.” But the unplanned and mundane has hidden worth too! This is a benefit of pets; they make you notice something beyond yourself and your interests and surprise you. Live-in partners can do this too. But it could also be a potted cactus, a pond, the neighbor kids’ basketball game, or why the train changes sound in just that spot. A little thing that diverts your normal course of life and brings you joy in something else. It’s hard to give examples because where one finds little joys really could be anything and its better if you don’t choose it. Rather, what I am talking about is that thing you don’t plan or choose to notice. You just do. Like my demanding black capped chickadees.
Footnotes:
(1) Except perhaps vultures. Don’t care for them. Blue jays are kinda assholes and unlikeable too but they're attractive, so they get away with it.
(2) Which is not even correctly incorrect because the other bird is a “red bellied woodpecker”
(3) “Do Birds Have Cheeks?: A Study” by Connor McLaughlin coming Fall 2025
(4) I absolutely love that the National Audubon Society has an article analyzing internet terms for birds. https://www.audubon.org/news/whats-difference-between-borb-and-floof
(5) Except perhaps caves, but what are bats but “cave-birds”?
(6) Instead, I have been distracted by this bird-blog.
(7) The title is a reference to a verse I think of a lot, Matthew 6:25-28. It’s primary message is more about having confidence that God will care for you, but I like a secondary meaning that we should “Look at the birds of the air [and] Consider the lilies of the field[.]”