To me, chickadees are very aware, curious, and smart birds. Watching them will clue you into many interesting things in nature.
At the moment as the osoberry leaves are continuing to emerge, some of the leaves aren’t unfolding. Some of the leaves are growing and staying tightly wrapped together. Inside this envelope of leaves, there are tiny, white larvae. Somehow, the eggs of this insect have caused the shrub to create this casing of leaves which also has a noticeable fuzziness too.
Chickadees love opening these little packages and they hang and cling to them in all sorts of acrobatic ways. Sometimes the leaf wraps will pop off and the chickadees will carry them over to a branch. Either way, within 10 to 15 seconds, they are able to open them up and extract the larvae.
I have put mesh produce bags around some of the branches to see if I can capture some of these insects as they mature into adults. Since the larvae are all so small, my thinking is that they will develop to maturity fairly quickly. I am hoping that within the next week or so I will see an insect flying around inside the bag.
