Week 32 in Your Vegetable Garden

August 9 to 15

Excerpt from our website https://gardening.yardener.com. For additional information on chickadees, click here.

Chickadees are the friendliest birds in the backyard. They can even be trained to eat from your hand, that is, if one has the patience to sit quietly while they are being encouraged.

Chickadees are common throughout the US. Although there are three different types of this charming bird, they vary only slightly in appearance and are easily recognized anywhere. They frequent residential yards and gardens, devouring insects and visiting feeders. All the while these cute little perky and bright creatures liven up the neighborhood with their antics and their distinctive chick-a-dee-dee-dee call.

Unlike many bird species where the male and female are easily distinguished by different colored plumage and the male does most of the singing, male and female chickadees look alike and sing alike. Chickadees are one of the quickest birds in the air, able to change directions in a lightning fast 3/100 of a second. Nine times out of ten, they are the first visitors to a brand new birdfeeder, having an unerring ability to find their favorite sunflower seeds. They are fearless and can even be trained to eat out of the hand of a patient yardener.

Chickadees Eat Bad Bugs
Because all chickadees are year-round insectivores as well as seed eaters, they are part of the natural pest control system in your yard. Those that live in and around the property patrol it regularly in their search for protein, dispatching all kinds of pest insects that are also resident in the yard. In the summer they can be depended upon to eat:
Lunch for Chickadees
Aphids
beetles
many weevils
Caterpillars
Colorado potato beetles
flea beetles
Flies
leafhoppers
tree hoppers
Leafminers
moths and moth eggs
plant lice
scale insects
true bugs
wasps

In the winter chickadees scour tree bark for eggs and pupae of various moths, spiders, katydids and other insects that winterover as eggs. They habitually feed from the ground to about five feet from the ground. When gleaning the bark of tall trees they will feed higher, but the bulk of their feeding is low to the ground.