03.23.25: Chickadee in snow

‍Chickadees are fun to watch but difficult to photograph.

‍I’ve now seen — and photographed — plenty of chickadees. As funny as the name is (it is thought to have come from its call, which sounds somewhat like “chick-a-dee”), the birds are even more fun to watch.

‍They are always active in their search for food, often hanging upside down from leaves or tree limbs to access seeds, berries or insects. They are also very curious, investigating anything they find in their home area. I’ve had chickadees land on my camera lens to see what I’m doing. Their curiosity means that chickadees are often the first birds to discover new feeders in the area.

‍But the constant activity makes photographing chickadees a challenge. They never seem to perch in one spot for more than a few seconds.

‍I found this Black-capped Chickadee resting on a branch on a snowy afternoon. The bird was watching a nearby feeder, waiting for a chance to swoop in and grab some food.

‍Nature websites almost always refer to chickadees as “cute.” That’s a nice description of a bird with such a funny name.

‍Every time I post a photo of a chickadee I tell the same story: I remember as a very young kid running through the neighborhood with a bunch of other kids all repeating the line, “my little chickadee.” I guess someone in the group had seen W.C. Fields on TV. Fields first used the catchphrase in a 1932 movie, “If I Had A Million,” and later starred in a 1940 movie called “My Little Chickadee.” He often repeated the phrase.

‍The phrase “my little chickadee” was so much fun to say that it was a natural for little kids like us to adopt it for our own.

‍I doubt if anyone in the group had a clue what a chickadee was or if anyone in the group had even seen one. We were probably about four or five years old.

‍I’m assuming this is a Black-capped Chickadee, the most common chickadee in Central Ohio, but I could be wrong. Central Ohio is in the overlap zone for the southern border of the Black-capped Chickadee’s range and the northern edge of the range for the nearly identical Carolina Chickadee. Black-capped Chickadees have a bit more white wing-feather edging and shorter songs than the Carolina Chickadee, but it is very difficult to tell them apart.

‍When I looked up the differences between Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees on All About Birds (my favorite site for bird information) I discovered some interesting facts about chickadees: 

• The Black-Capped Chickadee will hide seeds and other food items to eat later. Each item is placed in a different spot and the chickadee can remember thousands of hiding places.
• Every autumn Black-capped Chickadees allow brain neurons containing old information to die, replacing them with new neurons so they can adapt to changes in their social flocks and environment even with their tiny brains.
• Chickadee calls are complex and language-like, communicating information on identity and recognition of other flocks as well as predator alarms and contact calls. The more dee notes in a chickadee-dee-dee call, the higher the threat level.
• Most birds that associate with chickadee flocks respond to chickadee alarm calls, even when their own species doesn’t have a similar alarm call.