Boreal Chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus)
© Keith Williams
Last spring, I watched a Boreal Chickadee pair excavate a nest site by hollowing out an old tree trunk near the Yukon River. The entrance was about 6 feet off the ground and they took turns going into the cavity, then flew off with the wood chips they had excavated, so as not to leave any evidence of the nest site. While one was gone, the other would enter the cavity and excavate. It must have been a lot of work for these little birds to create such a deep cavity with those tiny beaks.
Photo taken on 15 May 2011
Photograph location coordinates are 60.737686:-135.07141.
Usage licence:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License