imaginary outfit: feeding the birds

Most of these birds will become quite tame with a little care on our part, and will soon come to look to us for their daily food. Especially if the ground is covered with snow, they will learn to become clamorous for their food, even alighting on the window-sills and striking the glass, apparently to attract attention to their wants. In summer the same species are much more shy, so winter gives us a better opportunity to study the habits and dispositions of the various birds that remain with us.

Mary Treat, "Our Winter Birds," The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 49, March 1882.

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I'm not sure how the phrase "eats like a bird" came to imply something dainty and delicate. Birds, at least the little birds around my house, eat like starving high school linebackers. Every time we fill the feeders, Sean and I watch in amazement as gangs of chickadees, titmice and finches eat and eat and eat, dropping the levels of seed in the tube by the inch before our bewildered eyes. Pounds of thistle and mixed seed disappear at alarming rates, and we can't blame the squirrels, because we can see the birds at work. And if we let the levels start getting low, they let us know, flying bang into the window, and lining up on the porch rail when we step outside, watching intently, which is a little unnerving. But turnabout is fair play. Sean and I can sit for hours watching them go about their bird business, and they've become our favorite neighbors.

perched

Our little gymnast, the titmouse, or black-capped chickadee, must not be forgotten. He is not regarded as migratory, and yet he comes to us each winter, and seems to go northward in the spring. He is the most fearless bird of my acquaintance, frequently eating from my hand, and is almost omnivorous, taking anything that comes in his way, from a bone that we hang on a tree for his tiny lordship to pick, down to a plate of preserved berries we have placed on the doorstep for the bluebirds. But he is quite exclusive in his society, and does not mingle freely with the other winter birds. The cold Northern snow-storms seem only to increase his jollity; now here, now there, clinging to a bough, head downward, chanting his chick-a-dee-dee. Emerson pictures him in the following lines:

When piped a tiny voice hard by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
Chic-chicadeedee! saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said, Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places,
Where January brings few faces. 

This poet, though he live apart,
Moved by his hospitable heart,
Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
To do the honors of his court,
As fits a feathered lord of land;
Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,
Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
Prints his small impress in the snow,
Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
Head downward, clinging to the spray. 

Mary Treat, "Our Winter Birds." The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 49, March 1882.

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Photos from Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. From Library and Archives Canada, discovered via A London Salmagundi.