birch-seed birds

[asakiyume]

For some reason, birch trees like to drop their seeds in winter, and their seeds look like tiny sharp-winged birds.

Here's a birch-seed bird:



And here is a catkin, with the birds clinging to it in neat interleaved stacks--maybe fibonacci spirals; I'll have to look closer. Some of these get eaten by chickadees, but others take flight and then dive into the snow.

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Do you ever see sprouts from them in Spring?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I do! There are bunches of little ones in the grass each year.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

They DO look like birds!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I can just see them transformed into actual living, breathing birds, with feathers in those colors.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

I like your picure of the seed in flight very much.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid in Anchorage (where both birches and chickadees are very common), one of my favorite things to do after school was wander through the woods near my elementary school and listen to the chickadees. I remember the birch seeds too, although I don't believe I ever saw the birds in them. To me they looked more like a fleur-de-lis.

I miss chickadees. We get more songbirds in the Midwest than in Alaska, but I've always found something charming and comforting about the "chick-a-dee-dee-dee!" call. Maybe because I mostly heard it during the winter, when it had few competitors, and they always seemed like they were laughing at the cold and the dark, because they knew springtime would come again.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It does look like a fleur-de-lis too!

I'm surprised you don't get chickadees in Chicago--I thought they were widely distributed across the northern United States. Maybe it's because it's urban?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

That seems likely - I mostly remember hearing them in wooded areas, of which are numerous in Anchorage (and few in Chicago). I miss them, but not necessarily enough to go find a patch of woods to hunt for them in. I enjoy the natural world and all, but at this stage in my life, I'm a city girl at heart. :)