The sky was still nearly dark this morning while the coffee was brewing and yet, there atop the topmost branch of the almost dead contorted filbert, Papa Chickadee was looking toward the entrance of the birdhouse just eight feet away, where he and Mamma Chickadee have so energetically built their nest over the past few weeks, singing his heart out; again and again, that proud, two-toned, descending pitch, Fee-Bee song, that musical, minor 3rd.
I’m probably just imaging things again, but it felt for all the world as if he was singing, not only to announce his primacy over this particular territory, but also to his mate and soon to be, bird babies, “Fee Bee. Fee Bee.” Your Papa’s right here and everything is ok. I’ve got you.
“Black-capped Chickadees construct their nests with moss, inner tree bark, and soft grasses. They line the nest cup (where the eggs will be laid) with a soft layer of animal fur. These cozy nest materials are necessary in order to keep their eggs and nestlings warm through the chilly spring weather. Female chickadees, like most songbirds, lay one egg per day, usually in the morning. To keep them hidden or perhaps to keep them warm, the female initially hides her eggs under a plug of animal fur whenever she leaves the nest. Clutch sizes average between 6-12 eggs and the female begins incubating once she has laid the final egg (or occasionally the day before).” Arnoldia, the publication of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum
https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/black-capped-chickadees-from-egg-to-airborne/
Days will pass between the first egg being laid and the last, since Momma chickadee can only manage to create one new egg per day. So, like many other birds Chickadees tend to wait until all the eggs have been laid before starting to incubate them, which helps assure that they’ll all hatch out at approximately the same time. Imagine what an advantage the first nestling would have over the others if it hatched out eight or ten days ahead of the last. Those poor, littlest ones hatching last wouldn’t have a chance when competing for food. Delaying incubation so that all will develop and hatch more or less at the same time gives everyone a better chance of survival.
I may be silly, imagining some possible, lullaby connection, singing to those lonely, little, dormant embryos in the nest who must wait for the others to arrive before they can be warmed up and have their developmental motors started. I certainly talked to my littles while they were still inside their momma. And since science continues to come to subtle, new and previously thought impossible understandings of the connections between living things (mother trees that communicate with and send nutrient gifts to the smaller trees nearby via a sort of fungus FedEx, migratory insects that navigate by the magnetic poles and the stars), I at least allow myself permission to feel the poetic shadings, the life force magic of one tiny, little male chickadee singing his two-toned song, over and over to wee little spirits encased in speckled, half-inch shells, resting upon a cool bed of moss, within a wooden box, a board’s length away from his perch atop a lifeless branch in near darkness. If this makes me a fool, then count me happy, for I am a joyous and hopeful fool.
“You'd think that people would've had enough of silly love songs
But I look around me and I see it isn't so
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know…”
Songwriters: Paul McCartney / Linda McCartney, Silly Love Songs-Wings
I knew a pianist who practiced hours a day while pregnant for a concert that occurred a month or so before she gave birth. After the baby was born, it would stop crying and listen whenever the mother played that piece. Those baby chickadees almost certainly hatch knowing their father's song.
May humanity’s innocence always be comforted and renewed by the song of joyous fools.