Month: January 2025

Picking up from the previous entry about chickadees:

The black-capped chickadee dwells in tree hollows, those spaces within the trunks of trees that have been hollowed out by birds (especially woodpeckers searching for insects) or by injury or from sim[ple decay. These hollows are often deep and include pulpy wood. The hollows are relatively safe and comfortable … for birds.

Not only birds but humans can find especially large tree hollows attractive dwelling-places. A relevant hagiographical example is the 12th century Dutch hermit Gerlac.

Gerlac Valkenberg had been a secular, worldly character most of his life, a soldier and mercenary. When his wife died, he began wandering, reaching Jerusalem on a penitential pilgrimage. Upon his return to his Netherlands home, Gerlac renounced his possessions and became a hermit, finally settling into a oak tree hollow as his dwelling.

Gerlac’s eremitic life upset the abbott of a nearby monastery, who tried to convince Gerlac to join the monastery. Gerlac refused, and the abbot began spreading rumors about Gerald’s supposed thievery and robberies, even persuading the townsfolk that Gerlac was hiding stolen money and goods in his tree hollow. A mob marched to the tree and chopped it down, only to discover nothing hidden in the tree, vindicating Gerlac. Towards the end of his life, it is said, Gerlac communicated with Hildegard of Bingen and was counted her friend.

A delight of deep winter is offering sunflower seeds to birds, specifically, to black-capped chickadees.

The black-capped chickadee is probably the most resilient of birds. Around December first, when heavier snows are falling and temperatures dip below freezing -— and it becomes clear, too, that bears have gone into hibernation — the time is right for putting out feeders. The best feeder is vertically long and tapered to frustrate squirrels and avoid bird flu from busy horizontal trays harboring germs from other birds and retaining their feces. For chickadees, life is short enough without additional hazards.

The chickadee will probably live for a year or two. They are born in May and have several months of summer to build rigor and memory. These smart little birds actually retain memory of food source locations and flight patterns, and even come to recognize humans.

Chickadees live in the hollow of a tree, which is why one can create a box in which the chickadee will happily reside if the box floor is strewn with wood shavings. They will have reproduced during that first splash of new spring and summer, and prepare themselves for first winter. If they can survive winter, the chickadees can eke out another summer, but probably not survive the upcoming second winter. They seem to live consciously, with a repertoire of songs and calls, which will linger into late summer and early autumn.

To hear the songs and calls ofchickadees in late autumn conveys a great poignancy because we know that the bird that is singing may not survive much longer. So the modest chickadee joins its more decorous counterpart, the hototoguiso, the Japanese nightengale, which, however, sings in mysterious night of the arrival of spring.