Woodstock just got a city bird, and it’s the one you’ve probably already been feeding in your backyard. The black-capped chickadee won a community-wide vote to become the official bird of Woodstock, Ontario, following the city’s recognition as a Bird Friendly City by Nature Canada.
The designation was led by the Woodstock Environmental Advisory Committee, which worked with Nature Canada to meet the program’s requirements: reducing threats to birds, protecting and restoring natural habitats, and getting residents involved through education and outreach. Once the city earned the designation, three shortlisted species went to a public vote, and the chickadee came out on top.
It’s a fitting pick. The black-capped chickadee is a year-round resident of Woodstock, not a seasonal visitor that disappears the moment temperatures drop. You can spot them at backyard feeders through the winter, and in shrubby areas along the city’s parks and trails pretty much any time of year. They’re also, by reputation, one of the more approachable bird species out there, which tracks for a city bird.
For the uninitiated: the black-capped chickadee is a small songbird with a distinctive black cap and bib, white cheeks, and soft grey wings. Its call is one of the more recognizable sounds in eastern Canadian woodlands, a clear two-note whistle that sounds a lot like its own name. They’re known for caching food, hiding seeds and insects in hundreds of different spots and actually remembering where they put them. Their hippocampus, the memory region of the brain, expands in autumn to help with exactly that, then shrinks back down in spring. Chickadees are also remarkably cold-tolerant, capable of entering a controlled hypothermia at night called torpor to conserve energy when temperatures plummet.
The Bird Friendly City program through Nature Canada is a national certification that recognizes municipalities making concrete efforts to protect birds and their habitats. It’s not a symbolic ribbon, it requires documented action on things like reducing window collisions, managing outdoor cats, and preserving green corridors. Woodstock joining that list puts it in company with a growing number of Canadian cities taking urban bird conservation seriously.
For anyone who wants to dig into the Bird Friendly City program itself, Nature Canada’s full details are at naturecanada.ca. And if you’ve got a feeder up already, congratulations, you’ve been doing your civic duty this whole time.