{"id":168672,"date":"2025-06-13T06:14:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T12:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=168672"},"modified":"2025-06-13T07:02:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:02:40","slug":"another-reason-to-absolutely-adore-chickadees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/13\/another-reason-to-absolutely-adore-chickadees\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Reason To Absolutely Adore Chickadees"},"content":{"rendered":"

They raid wasp nests for larvae and pupae. How adorable is that?<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I spent some time on my old unused and unmaintained wooden deck on the side of my house in an attempt to photograph hummingbirds at my Trumpet Vine. I had no luck with hummers but I documented an unexpected behavior of a Black-capped Chickadee.<\/p>\n

The chickadee landed on my deck railing but “he” was only there for a moment before he made a beeline (waspline?) for…<\/p>\n

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a small wasp nest that I hadn’t noticed that was hanging from a horizontal railing on my old deck gate. He’d obviously been there before, I’m sure of it.<\/p>\n

Here he’s pulling one of the wasp larvae out from one of the cells.<\/p>\n

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He turned and paused for long enough for me to get this single sharp photo of him with his prize, and then he was gone.<\/p>\n

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A tightly cropped version of the same photo for better detail. In the reflection in the bird’s eye, we can see the sun coming up through my neighbor’s trees.<\/p>\n

I believe the chickadee deliberately timed his visit to the nest when no wasps were there. But it didn’t take long for…<\/p>\n

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one of them to show up. Here the wasp is inspecting the damage.<\/p>\n

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Then the wasp scurried about as if she was looking for whoever or whatever raided her nest. Wasp revenge in the making.<\/p>\n

I believe this is a European Paper Wasp, an invasive species that first arrived in North America near Boston in the late 1970’s. Since then they’ve spread rapidly across the U.S. and parts of Canada. So I’ll destroy this nest in a day or two, after both the chickadee and this photographer have had more opportunities with it.<\/p>\n

And before any remaining larvae pupate and then become adults. I don’t want any more wasps, especially invasive ones, hanging around my yard, patio and vegetable garden.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They raid wasp nests for larvae and pupae. How adorable is that? (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,4133,392,4651],"tags":[7827,7825,7826,185,4134,311],"class_list":["post-168672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-capped-chickadee","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-wasps","tag-black-capped-chickadee-raiding-a-wasp-nest","tag-european-paper-wasp","tag-how-did-the-european-paper-wasp-get-to-north-america","tag-invasive-species","tag-poecile-atricapillus","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/black-capped-chickadee-4946-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HSw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168672"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168706,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168672\/revisions\/168706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}