Carolina chickadees are conspicuous dooryard birds, very vocal in pairs or family groups, and amusing as well as instructive to watch as they store seeds behind loose bark or the siding on my house. They are cooperative, scrappy, and persistent. If they want a nest box, they get it, even though a tufted titmouse twice their size started to build there. And if they want a small tree hole, they get it, despite ownership by a downy woodpecker twice their size. Long ago, Nancy and I adopted the chickadee's whistled, four-note family call ("fee bee, fee bay") to use in assembling our own family in noisy public places.

Unlike titmice, chickadees like to re-excavate appropriated cavities. If my bird boxes don't have wood chips or other debris to throw out, chickadees may not use them. Titmice like hard-bottomed natural cavities, while chickadees prefer old rotted woodpecker holes, which usually keeps the two out of each other's feathers. Also, chickadees start to excavate and build several days before titmice and a month before downy woodpeckers lay their first eggs. In fact, woodpecker holes usurped by chickadees are usually test holes or those drilled for winter roosts that are lower than holes drilled for nests. I've never seen downies contest the loss of their winter holes. Chickadees fuss and fidget over the holes they remake to personal specifications. They'll work furiously for a few days starting about now, rest a few days, construct a nest, rest again, and lay eggs by mid-March. Nests are mostly grass, moss, and hair -- no cedar bark, snakeskin, or bits of paper as used by tufted titmice. Four to eight fledglings appear in early April and feed themselves by late that month. Also, like titmice, they remain with parents through much of the summer, the last one usually leaving in September to join other adults and young in autumn-winter flocks that often include titmice and migrant or winter-resident species this time of year.