While backyard bird feeders are not allowed within the national parks, they are a popular part of the winter landscape outside of the park boundaries. It is important to note that bird feeders must be taken down during the spring, summer and fall to avoid attracting bears into our communities. Feeders can be very entertaining in winter, but we must all plan an active role in keeping our communities bear free.

It's funny how we always tend to focus on the superlatives--the biggest, the strongest and the most dramatic. Often our eyes gloss over some of the most common plants, animals and birds in their search for something unique and undiscovered. This is particularly true of our feathered residents. Often when I'm working with groups, someone will comment on the lack of birdlife in the Rockies. While it is true that we lack the diversity many more dramatic areas, we do have a fascinating variety of birds.

Some of the most common, but rarely noticed, birds are the black-capped and mountain chickadee and the red breasted nuthatch. Anyone who has ever filled a bird feeder will be very familiar with these birds as they are very quick to respond to a bowl of sunflower seeds. Often they are the first birds to discover the feeder and thus act as pioneers of a new feed site.

Chickadees are about 11 cm long with a tiny beak. They have a distinct black cap and throat patch separated by whitish cheeks. The backs are a drab greyish brown and the underside is lightly coloured. They quickly give away their presence as they open their beak and actually utter their name: "chick-a-dee-dee-dee". This, along with their distinctive markings will quickly identify this common resident. Mountain visitors need to be able to distinguish 4 different chickadees. The black-capped is the only one with an all black-cap, and a gray back. The mountain chickadee has a prominent white eyebrow line. The boreal chickadee trades in its black-cap for a brown one, and finally the chestnut-backed chickadee has a distinctively brown to chestnut coloured back and sides.

Chickadees spend their time investigating branches for small insects, larvae and seeds. Very agile flyers, you will often see them perched upside down as they peck away with their little beaks in search of food. When they take a large sunflower seed, they hold it between their feet and peck away at it until they get at the fleshy meat beneath the shell.

Their neighbour, the red-breasted nuthatch, is equally easy to identify. It has a bluish gray back and a rusty breast, along with a dark head patch and eye streak. Usually you will see it working its way down a tree, checking behind the tops of the bark scales for anything worth eating. Like the chickadee it likes insects and seeds and quickly finds any new bird feeder within its turf.

It's habit of always working down the tree, beginning at the top is quite unique. Since most other birds work up the tree, the nuthatch has developed a way to find food other birds miss. It walks down with its beak toward the ground and thus checks the tops of the bark which have been neglected by woodpeckers and creepers.

Like the chickadee its call is quite distinctive. It's a nasal sounding "eenk" which can't be confused with any other local bird. You may need someone to point the call out to you for the first time.