Black-capped chickadees are one of the busiest little songbirds around. Just try and get a photo of one. Despite being a quite common bird, taking a decent shot isn’t easy. But I happened to catch this one yesterday in a classic pose–pinning a seed underfoot and pecking at it.
Sparrows and other finches seem to be quite adept at manipulating seeds in their beaks by deftly extracting the meat then eating it. Chickadees apparently don’t have that skill. Instead, their feeding mechanism is:
1) zip in and grab a seed 2) zip to a nearby perch 3) place seed underfoot 4) pound away shell until meat exposed 5) eat 6) repeat.
