By Denny Olson
It only makes sense that my very last installment of the Niche (gulp, sniff, sniff) be about the bird family I view as grossly underrated and taken for granted. They seem to be everywhere, and it is easy to look past them searching for more exotic birds. Of course, this is about our constant buddies in the woods, the chickadees.
Consider our most common ones, the Black-capped Chickadees (BCCH). They are curious and seemingly happy-go-lucky, but considering their winter environment, I think they are just flat-out busy. Their thermoregulation skills are mind-boggling. In the warmer months, they “cache” (store) food for the winter by hiding insects and seeds in tree bark and other tiny cavities. The farther north they live, the more caching they do. They can require as much as three times their own weight in food per day(!) in the coldest days of winter. BCCH that live farther north – where it is colder – have larger brains, probably to be able to forage faster.
They nest in tree cavities (or artificial nest boxes). They also roost at night in cavities – especially in the winter – and lower their body temperature from the normal 108 degrees Fahrenheit down to as much as 93 degrees. They must shiver for a half hour in the morning to warm up and continue their day. Flocks of BCCH are so good at finding food that they are often followed by mixed flocks of woodpeckers, nuthatches and kinglets.
They usually eat about half seeds and half insects and spiders. But, when they are feeding chicks, they time their food requirements to the hatching of caterpillars, which then become 90% of their diet. A pair of BCCH feeding a normal brood (four to eight) of chicks may require 3000 to 6000 caterpillars until they all fledge! (We think we are busy parents?).
Black-capped Chickadees spread their wings and puff up all their head and body feathers, open their mouths wide, and sway back and forth to show aggression to intruders and smaller predators. To show submission, they press their feathers tight to their bodies and look smaller, which is called “sleeking”. They have at least 21 different phrases in their vocabulary for different situations, and their namesake “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call is the highly sophisticated alarm system of the woods. More “dees” equals more danger, and most other species of creatures respond accordingly.
When an intruder gets close to a nest hole, the female Black-capped Chickadee hisses like a snake and slaps her wings on the side of the nest, like a snake trying to strike. It causes involuntary incontinence in curious naturalists. To that I can attest.
Space doesn’t allow for all the stories about the other members of the genus, but here are a couple of highlights:
Mountain Chickadees (MOCH) are especially good at finding spruce budworms, which kill spruce and fir trees. These worms have outbreaks every 30 to 40 years and can nearly wipe out large areas of trees. Most ecologists project that without bird-foraging, those outbreaks would be larger and happen more often. Unlike Black-caps, MOCH don’t usually roost at night in cavities. They choose to sleep behind bark and in thick clumps of leaves. At the higher elevations, Mountain Chickadee brains grow by as much as 30% every winter, probably because they need to be smarter to find their food storage spots!
Boreal Chickadees (BOCH) are the only Chickadees that can survive temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit! So, they live at the higher subalpine areas here. They are very tame, probably because they rarely encounter humans. Their milk-chocolate cap always makes me happy (and craving a Hershey’s Kiss).
Our western temperate rainforest species, the Chestnut-backed Chickadee (CBCH) have a darker color in places where there is more rain and higher humidity. Unlike other chickadees, they don’t “cache” or store food for the winter, probably because winters are warmer where they live. Chestnut-backed Chickadees have a diet of two-thirds insects and spiders. They start feeding lower in trees and work their way upward toward the tops. When Chestnut-backed Chickadees are found with Black-capped Chickadees, they feed higher in the large trees than the Blackcaps. In general, they are high canopy feeders, and because of that, they don’t hang upside-down to feed as much as other Chickadees.
Chickadees have amazing and admirable epoch-honed adaptations, but their terminal cuteness and gregarious natures are what makes me grin. Every. Single. Time.