chickadees

In my estimation, the Black-capped Chickadee deserves the ornithology award as the ultimate prepper for the long, cold Montana winter. These songbirds must survive on stored seeds until the spring when they can again enjoy a more robust omnivorous diet. Weighing about the same as a AAA battery, Black- capped Chickadees spend the shortening days canvassing for seeds to store in hundreds of tiny hiding places embedded in their ten-mile territory.

By the end of the 19th century, and in less than a generation, Chief Plenty Coups and his people had shifted from being nomadic buffalo hunters to living a more individualized, agriculture- based existence. Today, Chief Plenty Coups State Park south of Billings near Pryor, Montana, chronicles the unimaginably swift changes his people underwent and adapted to.

What I have learned is that, despite the obvious difference in weight between human brains (tipping the scale at about three pounds) and chickadee brains (similar in weight to a raisin), there are commonalities in structure and function between the two species.

This summer, while watching white-crowned sparrows, pine siskins and Cassin's finches feeding on the sunflower seeds we’d scattered on the rail of the…

"Fieldnotes," November 24th & 25th, 2013: "Gall Foragers," by Charles Miller / Caroline Kurtz.http://www.montananaturalist.org/"I observed the downy…