Black-capped Chickadees
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Black-capped Chickadee, Parus atricapillus or Poecile atricapillus, is a small songbird, a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae.
Adults have a black cap and bib with white sides to the face. Their underparts are white with rusty brown on the flanks; their back is grey. They have a short dark bill, short wings and a long tail.
Their breeding habitat is mixed or deciduous woods in Canada, Alaska and the northern United States. They nest in a hole in a tree; the pair excavates the nest, using a natural cavity or sometimes an old woodpecker nest. They may interbreed with Carolina Chickadees or Mountain Chickadees where their ranges overlap. The Black-capped and Carolina chicadees are virtually impossible to tell apart visually, but they are readily distinguished by call. Their point of overlap is near New Brunswick, New Jersey.
They are permanent residents, but sometimes move south within their range in winter. On cold winter nights, these birds reduce their body temperature to conserve energy.
These birds hop along tree branches searching for food, sometimes hanging upside down or hovering; they may make short flights to catch insects in the air. Insects form a large part of their diet, especially in summer; seeds and berries become important in winter. They sometimes hammer seeds on a tree or shrub to open them; they also will store seeds for later use.
During the fall migration and winter, chickadees often flock together. Many other species of birds, including titmice, nuthatches, and warblers can often be found foraging in these flocks. Mixed flocks stay together because the chickadees call out whenever they find a good source of food. This calling out forms cohesion for the group, allowing the other birds to find food more efficiently.
Calls
The vocalizations of Black-capped chickadees are highly complex; 13 distinct types of vocalizations have been classified, many of which are complex and can communicate different types of information. Chickadees' complex vocalizations are likely an evolutionary adaptation to their habitat: they live and feed in dense vegetation, and even when the flock is close together, individual birds tend to be out of each others' visual range.
The song of the Black-capped is a simple, clear whistle of two notes, identical in rhythm, the first roughly a whole-step below the second. This is distinguished from the Carolina chickadee's four-note call fee-bee fee-bay; the lower notes are nearly identical but the higher fee notes are omitted, making the Black-capped song like "bee bay".
The males only sing the song when in relative isolation from other chickadees (including their mates). In late summer, some young birds will sing only a single note. Both sexes sometimes make a faint version of the song, and this appears to be used when feeding young.
The most familiar call is the familiar chick-a-dee-dee-dee which gave this bird its name. This call has been observed to consist of up to four distinct units which can be arranged in different patterns to communicate information about threats from predators and coordination of group movement. Recent study of the call shows that the number of dees indicates the level of threat from nearby predators. An analysis of over 5,000 alarm calls from chickadees, it was found that alarm calls by triggered small, dangerous raptors had a shorter interval between "chick" and "dee" and tended to have extra "dees", usually averaging four instead of two. In one case, a warning call about a pygmy owl, a prime threat to chickadees, contained 23 dees. The Carolina Chickadee makes a similar call which is faster and higher-pitched.
There are a number of other calls and sounds that these Chickadees make, such as a gargle noise which is usually used by males to indicate a threat of attacking another male, often when feeding. This call is also used in sexual contexts. This noise is among the most complex of the calls, containing 2-9 of 14 distinct notes in one population that was studied.
Chickadees in Culture
This is the provincial bird of New Brunswick and the state bird of Maine and Massachusetts.
Taxonomic note: Most authorities retain Poecile as a subgenus within a broader view of the genus Parus, but the American Ornithologists' Union treats Poecile as a distinct genus.
Interesting Black-capped Chickadee Facts
• The Black-capped Chickadee’s sound (chick-a-dee-dee) is one of the most complex vocalizations in all of the animal kingdom.
• The Black-capped Chickadee has a great memory – it can remember where it hid its food up to 28 days after hiding it! More than that, it can remember thousands of hiding places at a time!
• A Black-capped Chickadee flock has a rigid hierarchy.
• The Black-capped Chickadee can adjust its temperature at night to conserve energy. Its night temperature can drop about 10-12 degrees Celsius from its daytime temperature!
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
Related Websites: Birds of Nova Scotia (Info & Color Drawings) ... USGS ... Greennature.com
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