Drawing by Rachel Shi ‘15Chickadees are companions wherever you go around campus. Year-round resi-dents, they are curious and busy, constantly chirping as they move through trees for seeds and insects. A familiar call is the chick-a-dee-dee-dee that you can hear through deciduous and mixed forests. While in many bird species, the male and female will look different, the chickadee is an example of monomorphism – the male and female look identical, with a tiny body, black cap and throat, and white cheeks. An especially interesting behavior is their warning system of adjusting the number of dees when hawks are in the area – a more dangerous hawk warrants more dees! And the other birds know to pay attention.

Chickadees are regular visitors at birdfeeders in suburban and urban environ-ments. An interesting habit of chickadees is how they will hide seeds to eat later. They will tuck them into crevasses in tree bark and will remember thousands of hiding places. In the fall, you’ll see chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice all doing this same behavior – and then they all forage in the winter for these tucked away morsels of energy. Black-Capped Chickadee

Natural History Profile by Karen Advokaat, Staff

It is difficult to choose a most favorite place on campus, but many have to do with nature: the great beech, the great ancient oak next to the ARC, the fields of cuckoo flowers at graduation time...Walking into Kellogg infused with wonder under the magic evening sky, to work with students on making music… what a beautiful place this is and how lucky am I to belong here.Anne Legêne, Faculty

24 25

Photo by Ed Harvey, Staff