By Bill Sherwonit

(Alaska Beacon) — It took me decades to really notice birds, to give them my full attention. When I did finally invite them into my life at age 43, I fell deeply—and some friends might add, madly—in love with our winged and feathered neighbors, especially the little ones that swarm backyard feeders throughout Alaska’s long and harsh winters.

At the heart of my late-in-life love affair with birds are black-capped chickadees, which first gained my attention more than sixty years ago, when I lived along the edge of rural Connecticut. Like other common New England birds, they quickly faded into the background of my world, for as a boy I was drawn to more exotic creatures: snakes and salamanders, frogs and turtles and trout.

My general disinterest in birds lasted more than four decades, until I settled in the foothills along Anchorage’s eastern edge.

On what’s known to locals as the Hillside, all manner of things began to grab my attention in new ways: the Chinook winds that rush and sometimes roar through the Chugach Mountains and........

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