photographs and text by Brian Willson

Ah, early February. Still we’re mired in deep winter, but the photoperiod is noticeably lengthening, bald eagles will soon be building nests, and tits have begun to sing their songs of love.

Certainly you’ve all heard the music I’m referring to on crisp, sunny mornings exactly like this one. Two or three clear, joyful notes.

I’m referring, of course, to the mating calls of the tufted titmouse and black-capped chickadee. Although they look a little different, these two friendly local species are clearly related.—they have the same habits, their voices sound similar. In fact, they’re both members of a bird family known as “tits” elsewhere in the English-speaking world. And around here, at this time of year, tits begin to think about love.

I awoke this morning to a titmouse calling Peter-peter-peter! out my window. Later, in the sun, both titmice and chickadees flitted about the branches of the big, utterly leafless oaks on the hill out back of my place. A titmouse investigated an old nuthatch hole; a chickadee sang Fee-bee!

The love song of the chickadee is familiar to just about any Mainer—which seems appropriate, it being our state bird—but not all Mainers know just what they’re really hearing when that musical pairing of short, even notes (a perfect whole step, descending) echoes from a stand of sugar maples. I’ve had dozens of natives look me in right in the eye and insist the bird was a phoebe. (A chickadee, after all, delivers a raucous chickadee-dee-dee! and could never sing so sweetly.) Well, sure enough, eastern phoebes are common locally—but they’re migrants and won’t return for several weeks. Besides, the call a phoebe gets its name from is far coarser, far less musical than the clear “spring” song of a chickadee.

If you’re lucky, a group of male chickadees will begin professing their love all at once, and you’ll hear a Fee-bee! chorus filtering down from the trees. Sometimes their calls will even strike the same pitch—but often their pitches won’t match. (I’ve read that female chickadees will always choose the  higher singing male, a fact that makes me feel sorry for the lower singers.) Even female tits sing once in a while, but usually the songs belong to males.

I feel sure the lengthening photoperiod has something to do with it. Spring approacheth, and the birds can hardly contain themselves. Perhaps that’s one thing they have in common with the human species.