As parents, part of our job is to feed our kids good, nutritious foods. It’s important, so, for the most part, we don’t mind. Perhaps we even enjoy it.

But imagine doing it a hundred or more times a day, every day, for weeks.

Now add to it the need to be watchful of critters that want to eat the young you are working so hard to raise.

Such are the lives of birds; and we witnessed it firsthand recently in our backyard. Sort of.

While puttering about the yard, we decided to check to see if any birds had accepted our offer of residency in the nest box hanging on the backside of our garage.

A few years ago, a pair of white-breasted nuthatches had set up housekeeping in an old box that had since fallen apart.

We'd put up this new box but hadn’t noticed much activity around it this spring. So we gave it a gentle jiggle, and out zipped a little black-capped chickadee.

Ah-ha – tenants! From that day on we kept our eyes and ears open and enjoyed the activity around the nest box.

So on this day, as we watered our cucumbers and tomatoes, we glimpsed one of the parent birds disappear in through the entry hole of the nest box carrying a bug.

The eggs had hatched! We turned off the water and listened to the hatchlings begging for food inside the box.

It was easy to imagine the four, six, maybe as many as eight tiny birds squeezed together inside, each one cranking its bill open trying to convince mom or dad that they, not their siblings, were most in need of that insect.

As the parent flew back out, the other appeared on a tree limb near where we were and scolded, giving its chick-a-dee-dee-dee alarm vocalization.

It had a big juicy bug in its bill that it wanted to deliver to its babies, but it wasn’t about to go into the birdhouse with us standing between it and the box.

Or so we thought.

We put down the hose and moved away. But the chickadee remained on the limb, scolding us.

We moved to the far side of the house (out of sight of the bird) and still it sounded the alarm.

We peeked around the corner of the garage and realized what it probably was that had the chickadee so upset. A snake. Or rather, the garden hose that perhaps to the chickadee looked like a snake, a creature most birds recognize as a predator.

Testing the theory, we pulled the hose away from the area. The chickadee skittered to a tree limb near it. So we wound the hose back onto its holder on the side of the house, well away from the nest box and walked away to watch.

Sure enough, the feisty little chickadee flew close to the hose, scolded it as if to say, “I see you, don’t even think of coming near my family!” and then carried the bug to its brood inside the birdhouse.

Curious, we moseyed back into the backyard to test the response, keeping enough distance not to cause the chickadee family any potential annoyance.

We stood behind the brush pile on the side of the lawn near the birdhouse and waited. Within seconds, in and out went one of the parents, quickly followed by the other, neither concerned whatsoever by our presence.

Our methods were hardly scientific. Perhaps the chickadee didn’t like that the hose was something in its immediate surroundings it hadn’t seen before.

As overly protective parents ourselves, we can relate to that. In any case, the chickadees have since fledged and we’re enjoying watching them as they become more independent and head out into summer, and the rest of their lives.

Dr. Jeff Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative. During his time at the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology and as the Audubon Society's national bird conservation director, Dr. Wells earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. Jeff's grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, also formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a widely published natural history writer and a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Together, they have been writing and teaching people about birds for decades. The Maine natives are authors of the highly acclaimed book, “Maine's Favorite Birds.”