Hole-y Peeping

Chickadees and titmice in particular are easily aggitated by the sound of a screech-owl. They are conditioned to flock together and work on driving out the predator. This group effort provides for their mutual protection. Birders know about this behavior and regularly seek to "call in" flocks of small song birds by imitating a Screech-owl (usually in hopes of finding something rarer than a chickadee or titmouse). I do this quite often.

So it was interesting to me to observe a flock of these little critters recently. The chickadees and titmice were already a bit worked up so I thought that there might be a live owl in the neighborhood. I thought this particularly because I saw some of them investigating a large hole in a tree--a perfect spot for a screech-owl to roost. So I tried imitating a screech-owl in hopes of enticing the invisible owl out of the hole. Sadly, that didn't happen. What did happen was that a number of chickadees and titmice completely ignored the source of the sound (i.e. me) and instead peered into the hole in the tree!

So I got wondering if this was at all common (I had seen this behavior at least once before). So I sent word to a local birding e-mail list. Well, I found that this was a rather common occurence. Most startling were the comments of a couple of people about how small birds would investigate holes even when screech-owls didn't occur in the area. Someone also alluded to a study where scientists tested whether the birds simply check out any hole by posting a box they knew to be empty of owls, and the birds still peered into it!

Apparently chickadees and titmice are "hardwired" to look into holes when they hear a screech-owl. Now this behavior may seem to us to be a bit of a waste of time, but if there were something as important as a potential owl in the neighborhood and you were a chickadee you would want to be sure. Well friends, there is reportedly something rather important coming to our neighborhood. That would be the child expected on December 25th! Maybe we should take a lesson from our feathered friends who can't help themselves from doing some hole-y peeping and be sure to do some holy peeping of our own!