Chickadee

I have been going to this nature trail affectionately called 'The Chickadee Place' for as long as I can remember. It is actually called 'The F.W.R. Dickson Wilderness Area' and is a short drive out of Paris. It is a really small trail with steps and boardwalks. On the boardwalks chickadees will eat from your hand, even from the hands of little kids. We go all year round. I can remember going as a kid all bundled up, the trails completely covered in ice. I still love going there when I visit home. It is all about the chickadees. Definitely my favorite bird. (They are also the provincial bird of New Brunswick, Ontario's is the Loon.) When I was younger, I also subscribed to the children's magazine 'Chickadee' which was a younger version of 'Owl', which I got later on. Chickadee isn't really the right name (but I'm neither a biologist nor a bird watcher). Chickadees, tits, or titmice basically are the birds found in the family Paridae under the order Passeriformes (known as perching or song birds.) Most of the birds in this family look like what I would consider a chickadee. The Paridae family is composed of small stocky woodland birds with a short stout little bill. I like the ones that have the little cap and bib with a strip to the sides of the face. The name 'chickadee' is also onomatopoeic, which is my favorite literary term (when the word mimics the sound it is describing, like 'meow' or 'click'.) Yes, I have both a favorite literary term and a favorite bird and today I realised they combined. I always forget the the chickadee is another example of onomatopoeia, their call is 'chick-a-dee-dee-dee'. I don't really see them much in the city, they used to come to our feeders at home. I would put a feeder out this winter at Le Manior, but I think that the squirrels would take it over. They are cute, but not as cute as fluffy little chickadees.