Take time to meet your neighbors! Get to know three small birds that visit the Broad Ripple yards - the Chickadee, Titmouse, and Carolina Wren. These year-round residents enliven backyards, adding music and vitality to the landscape. No matter whether you're in an apartment or bungalow, lakeside, on a city street or in a subdivision, these small birds will find you and your feeder.

Chickadees are black-headed birds with gray bodies. Small, flitty, and cheerful, the chickadee likes to find black oil sunflower seed at your feeders. Often appearing in pairs, these little birds will also eat insects in your yard. It takes some expertise to differentiate between Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees (the former has broad, white edging on secondary flight feathers and a four-note song), but we probably have the Carolina Chickadee in the Broad Ripple area. Warblers fly with chickadees, and by watching for chickadees, you're more likely to spot other migrating species as well. Feeding behavior provides a clue to identifying the Carolina Chickadee. They grab a seed and carry it off to a secluded branch to be consumed.

The Tufted Titmouse is a soft, silvery gray-backed bird with a peachy colored blush on the side of its white belly. A black patch just above the bill leads your eye to the gray crest. Its profile is much like that of a small cardinal. A thick neck and head makes these birds appear larger than they really are. They love to grab a sunflower seed and break it with their snubbed beaks. They flock with chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers and are regular visitors to feeders where they can be a bit bossy. Although I see more titmice in the winter, they are here all summer long.

Here's another Carolina-the Carolina Wren. This year-round neighbor is probably best known for nesting in strange places around your house. Be that in planters or the top of backdoor lights, nests of this chipper bird with its cocked tail deserve welcome. Although these wrens usually eat insects, they often visit feeders located near brush to indulge in a sunflower seed, peanuts, or suet. The Carolina Wren's endearing "tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle" is one of the loudest of all small birds' songs. Its tail, held upright when perched, is its best identifying feature. The Carolina Wren is mostly brown with a light yellowish-beige belly. It has a large white stripe over each eye like an over-extended eyebrow and has a white throat. Its wings and tail are barred with black, and there are thin white bars on its wings.

Next time you step out into your backyard, see if you can spot any one of these visitors. To attract them, you can put out a bird house in the spring and install feeders filled with black oil sunflower seed, peanuts, and suet near protective shrubs and trees. Enjoy these cheerful feathered friends. Their song and movement can help you forget the cares of the day.