While out in the yard today I was enjoying the various calls of the yard
birds. The song sparrows were tuning up, the Towhees were muttering their
Creeeet, and the chickadees seemed particularly abundant. As the sun broke
briefly through the clouds, a Douglas squirrel started going off about some
transgression or another. I turned the corner around the house to the feeder
and as expected, the squirrel was seated in the feeder. It took a moment
for me to figure out that the squirrel was surrounded by a band of a dozen
or so chickadees. As I watched, the daring little birds would take turns
darting into the side of the feeder which was not occupied by squirrel, they
would grab a seed and depart. One after another they did this, and this
seemed to upset the piggy little squirrel, his indignant chirps were
accented by the flick of his tail. This seemed to have little affect on the
chickadees who continued to grab seeds.

Finally the squirrel tried moving around to the other side of the feeder and
perhaps because of his agitated state, he lost his balance, the feeder
tipped a bit and down the squirrel went, feet and tail flailing. It's only
about 8 feet or so and the squirrel had nothing damaged but his dignity. It
was interesting to me that the chickadee calls had a bit more of a beeping
quality to them. Chickadee laughter? The squirrel thrashed his tail back
and forth like an angry cat, then shot up the adjacent cedar tree, stopping
on a branch across from the feeder and launched into a series of barks and
chirps, clearly agitated and telling off the world about it.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, teacher

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