With all the majesty around me—crystal lakes, towering mountains, bull elk clashing antlers like Viking warriors—you’d think the last thing I’d point my camera at would be a bird that weighs less than a granola bar crumb. But no. Enter the Mountain Chickadee.
The people standing nearby squinted into the distance and asked, “What are you photographing way out there?”
My reply: “All I can tell you right now is that he’s tiny… and ridiculously fast.”
Here’s how it went:
- Click. Check the shot. No bird.
- Reframe. Track him. Click. Just a blur of feathers leaving the frame.
- Try again. Click. Perfectly sharp… branch. The bird? Gone.
Finally, after twenty or so “practice shots,” I realized this wasn’t a Black-capped Chickadee like back home in Rhode Island. Nope—this guy was rocking a mask, like a little avian bandit. A Mountain Chickadee.
Now, some fun facts that made me laugh while he mocked my autofocus:
- They need about 10 calories a day—roughly one peanut butter smudge—to stay alive. Meanwhile, I was burning 500 calories just chasing him with my lens.
- They stash food everywhere. Find them a sunflower seed, and they’ll jackhammer it open with their beak, then vanish to hide it—probably in the same place my missing lens caps go.
- One chickadee was found with 275 caterpillars in its stomach. Two hundred seventy-five! I can’t even finish 20 chicken nuggets.
- And the oldest recorded Mountain Chickadee was over 10 years old. Which in chickadee years is like being the Gandalf of the forest.
So yes, in the middle of nature’s grand theatre, I spent my time trying to outwit a bird that made me look like the rookie.
And if you ask me? That’s time well wasted.
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