Bushtits To The Rescue

January 13, 2022 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 13 Comments

Well, it turns out that one of the lesser known symptoms of COVID is the complete and utter inability to write blog posts.

Like many others, we had a rather Omicrummy Christmas as the virus raced through our household, and although triple-vaxxed, we were laid low for a couple of weeks.

Fortunately it’s been mainly just medium horrible cold and flu symptoms, overlaid with exhaustion and the need for many naps and lots of Advil.

Every day I’ve thought “must write a blog post’” . . . and every day I’ve taken the alternative route of flopping in my comfy chair and watching hours of TV. Even daytime TV was not off limits! Some desultory knitting or needle felting was completed in between naps.

Throughout this period there was a tiny, slightly more active, part of my brain just itching to write a blog post. Whenever I did get outside to walk the dog, or just stand in my dressing gown in the garden, there was bird inspiration everywhere — just begging to be shared.

It seems, however, that the COVID brain cannot process inspiration.

Also, complete sentences seemed like just . . . so . . . much . . . w — o — r — k

Yesterday, however, the bushtits decided enough was enough. A committee came, literally, to my back door to FORCE me to write about them.

In case you’re not familiar with these characters, bushtits are tiny, grey, determined and objectively adorable birds. See my previous post Consider the Bushtit for just some of the reasons why.

During the very cold weather we had over the holidays they came to the garden many times a day to visit the suet feeder.

I did manage to write a few short social media posts while I was sick and one of them was about the bushtits …

The rare sight of a lone bushtit.

They travel in close knit chattering charabanc tours of 20-30. The rest of the tour group was close by. I always wonder if one of them is the Rick Steves of the gang, pointing out the local attractions. “On our left we have the famous suet feeder — but be sure to step out of your comfort zone and try the exotic delights of the hummingbird feeder. Don’t miss the bugs up there on the maple. OK, time’s up … on to the next step on the tour … no laggards please.”

It is just possible that I am spending too much time with birds … 🤪

Of course, as many of you wisely pointed out, it is impossible to spend too much time with birds!

And here’s a photo of the tour group having a refreshment break at the hummingbird feeder.

Bottoms up!

Incidentally, I’d been wondering for a while why I kept losing the little yellow nectar covers on the hummingbird feeders until I noticed them lying in the snow after the bushtits had been by. How did they get them off? Again, see Consider the Bushtit to see how cleverly they can use their tiny claws.

So what could these birds have done yesterday that was even cuter and cleverer than all of this?

For context, the weeks of snow and icy slush have been replaced this week by yet another Atmospheric River, bringing relentless rain and grey skies. Not much inspiring to look at outside, but I just happened to glance outside of my back door window and did a double take. It looked like a scene from the old Cinderella cartoon of my childhood …

This is only a small portion of the whole group. By the time I got my phone out to video them, about two thirds of the crowd had moved on, but you can see that they were making themselves very cosy under our deck, taking advantage of the heated hummingbird feeder and arranging themselves on the big floral metal shelf as if it were a specially designed bushtit drying rack.

Pair of sleeping bushtits sheltering from rain on a floral rack under a deck

Bushtits drying out, and apparently napping.

As you can see, this was already too amazing not to write about, but there was more!

Check out the couple snuggling together in the next video. They were pressed so tightly together, and for so long, I worried that they’d got sugar water on themselves from the hummingbird feeder and become stuck!

Sorry the video and pictures aren’t the best quality. I was filming sometimes through the window and the shadow in some of the video is the door, open just a crack to stick a lens out.

While the whole group was heart stoppingly cute, this particular couple took the cake. This is one of the chief joys of watching birds. You may think you’ve seen all the amazing things about them.

But you never have!

The delicacy of their tiny, wet, translucent, slightly bedraggled tails …

I’m not sure if they are actually shivering here, as the weather was much milder than it’s been, or if it was part of their feather drying technique. Or perhaps they were just so excited to be together …

I imagine that the bushtit delegation was sent by the other birds to overcome my inertia by dint of sheer cuteness. Now that I’ve actually found where my keyboard is again, I hope I’ll be able to make some new posts about some of the other amazing birds that stopped by over the last couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes open for what new and amazing things the bushtits have up their tiny feathery sleeves.

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Small Change

May 28, 2021May 28, 2021 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

This a little story of serendipity involving Agnes (the small but determined bushtit), a friend, and the coins of the realm.

Here is Agnes, a female bushtit.

If you would like to read more about why bushtits are such awesome birds, check out my 2020 post Consider the Bushtit.

Agnes is the model for one of my most popular prints, Small But Determined, and is a member of the ensemble cast in Birds of Judgment.

She also makes tiny guest appearances on some of the parcels I send out to customers in the form of stickers I have made to adorn outgoing orders.

I often put one of Frazzled Mabel, for example, near the flap of a package so that the recipient can have an extra little smile as they open it.

I don’t put Agnes stickers on every parcel — I often consider what the customer ordered and “customize” the sticker combination according to what I guess they might like most. (Shhh … don’t tell the time and motion efficiency inspector!)

What you might call … badaboom … Flicker Stickers

So the situation is that there are a few Agnes stickers out there in the world.

Now to my friend.

She and her partner have recently moved away from Vancouver. We had a farewell drink with them in the garden just last week. One of the last things she did before starting the trip to the new place on Vancouver Island was to pick up some groceries. Later, when she looked at the change in her pocket, she found Agnes gazing up at her …

… having been stuck on the back of, what we call in Canada, a loonie. *

It fit perfectly as the stickers are, as we say here, loonie-sized.

My friend sent me the photos above and we both thought what a funny and crazy coincidence that was. I also thought … maybe it was the universe giving me one more chance to wish her bon voyage.

* This is why we call them loonies!

So, if it was you who put Agnes on the coin, thanks!

And now I think we can now describe Agnes as, not only small and determined, but also well travelled, and occasionally, legal tender!

Consider the Bushtit …

March 15, 2020 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 14 Comments

Yes, let us drag our minds away from the headlines for a few moments to consider the many amazing things about this rather drab, and somewhat unfortunately named little bird.

And it really is minuscule, weighing in at about 5.3 grams — approximately the weight of one nickel. It’s one of the tiniest songbirds, coloured a modest beige-grey and, with it’s squeaky call, very like a flying mouse.

You can see how really tiny they are when they decide to take a bath. I remember how shocked I was as kid when I saw my aunty’s Yorkshire Terriers soaking wet.

Similar effect with bushtits.

It’s hard to decide what I like most about bushtits, but high on the list has to be their nest making technique. Essentially, they weave an elastic sock out of moss, grass, lichen, leaves, small twigs.

A bushtit nest I found lying on the ground after nesting season a few years ago. It measures about 25 cm (10-inches) from top to bottom.

The ingenious addition of spider web to the construction is what makes them stretchy — a handy feature as both parents, possible extra helpers and, eventually, 5-7 baby bushtits, will all be snuggled in there at one time. The interior is made extra cosy with a lining of downy plant material and feathers, while the outside is camouflaged with the addition of material from nearby foliage.

You can see a bushtit popping his head out of the nest, top left.

Another bushtit bonus: they generally come in bulk. It’s rare to see one by itself as they arrive in the garden like an excited tour group on a very tight schedule. One minute there are zero bushtits, then there are thirty. They’ll crowd the local attractions, tweeting their reviews, before abruptly weaving off en masse to the next stop on the itinerary.

They love suet, but they also like the finch feeder — and I’ve even seen them drink from the hummingbird feeder on occasion.

Another thing for gardeners to love about bushtits — they will eat aphids from your plants! They also enjoy small spiders and other bugs that live on the underside of leaves. Their small size gives them the advantage of being able to hang underneath leaves and access a bug harvest there that’s inaccessible to bigger birds.

Me next!

One of the very most amazing things that I’ve just recently noticed about bushtits is that they can hold food in their little claws and eat it like a sandwich. I thought my eyes were deceiving me at first, so I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a decent photo. Not so easy, as those feet are so tiny and so fast, but here are a few of my efforts to capture the Bushtit Sandwich Effect.

I’ve not noticed any other of our local birds using such a prehensile-like feeding technique, and I honestly don’t remember seeing bushtits doing this until the last few months, so I sort of wonder if it’s one of those miracles of city bird adaptation.

Still need more amazing facts about bushtits? OK, how about the fact that, despite their tiny size and uniform colour, you can easily tell the males from the females by their eyes? The males have dark, button-like eyes, while the females have light coloured ones — pale gold in our part of the world — giving them that intense “Angry Bird” look I do so love.

Male Bushtit

Female (don’t mess with me) Bushtit

The photo above became the basis of one of my most recent bird portraits of “Agnes, the smallest but by far the most furious of the Furies.”

Do you sometimes hear a small shrub alive with tweets, and then the bush seems to deconstruct before your eyes into a living Escher-like bird design — and it’s bushtits heading off somewhere else? That’s another thing I love about them. They’re magic.

So, while there are definitely a lot of massively worrying things going on in the world right now, this is a small (tiny, really) reminder that there are still many good and amazing things going on all around us — under leaves, inside mossy sock-nests, or flying around in judgemental little groups.

Sometimes, for your own mental health, you just need to Consider the *#@*!! Bushtit …