Chickadee 2200-79973

By Dave Erler, Senior Naturalist

Black-capped Chickadees with their distinctive black, white, and gray plumage are a familiar bird in New England. Yet to most of us, when we see one Chickadee it looks just like another. Occasionally one stands out such as the one that comes to the feeders at my home. This individual is easy to identify due to its several white tail feathers, meaning it is piebald or partially albino. Rarely you might see one with several colored plastic bands attached to one leg. This means a local researcher, authorized by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, marked it to help identify the different birds in that local population.

As a permitted bird bander myself, I have the opportunity to meet up close and personal many Chickadees through annual banding activities here at Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. But lacking authorization to place colored bands on birds’ legs, I only use small standard US Fish & Wildlife Service aluminum leg bands. Although each of these bands has a unique series of numbers etched in the aluminum, the numbers are far too small to read unless the bird is in hand. Once released you might be able to see a bird that has a band on its leg, but you really have to recapture the bird to actually identify it as a particular individual.

Over the past forty years I have banded well over a thousand Chickadees and recaptured nearly as many. You might think that after a bird has gone through the trauma of being captured once it would try to avoid being captured again. With Chickadees that doesn’t seem to be the case. A number of years ago I banded one Chickadee and recaptured it a dozen times in the same day it was banded! Still most of the Chickadees are only recaptured infrequently and usually within one to two years of having been banded. Indeed the average Chickadee only lives one to two years, but a few individuals survive much longer. That brings us to Chickadee 2200-79973.

I first “met” Chickadee 2200-79973 on February 9, 2005. I don’t know if this individual was a male or female as both sexes look alike for most of the year. The sexes can only be determined for a brief time during the breeding season, and then only while in the hand by peeking beneath the underside feathers. (Females have a brood patch on their bellies and males a distinct swelling at their rear end opening called a cloacal protuberance.) At the time of banding Chickadee 2200-79973 was an average Black-capped Chickadee with a 65 millimeter wing chord (wrist to longest feather), 63 mm tail, 10 mm bill, and a weight of 11 grams (there are 28.35 grams/ounce). This Chickadee was banded that day during a school program. The students not only got see this little guy or gal but had the opportunity to record the data, place the band on its leg, and release it. All agreed it was a special little bird, although I didn’t realize how special at the time.

The next time 2200-79973 was encountered was on January 7, 2006. Other than the tail feathers being 3 mm longer than the year before it seemed to be just the same. We didn’t see this feisty little character again until March 20, 2008. At that age it had it had already beaten the odds living much longer than 95% of Chickadees. On March 4, 2011, it was captured again making it the oldest surviving Chickadee I had ever banded. Then on February 28, 2014, I was really surprised, as you have probably guessed by now, 2200-79973 was waiting in one of the traps. I don’t know when this bird actually hatched, but the fact that it was banded in the winter of 2005 meant its minimum age was at least 10 years. Although the North American longevity record for a Black-capped Chickadee is twelve years, five months, this incredible little bird had survived three years longer than the next oldest Chickadee I have banded. It is going on nearly three years since 2200-79973 was last encountered, but you can bet that every time I take a Chickadee from one of the traps, I haven’t given up hope that he or she might just prove to be the ultimate Chickadee survivor. Or maybe after getting caught five times in ten years he or she might just have figured out how not to get caught!

If you would like to find out firsthand how we catch, measure, and band Chickadees and other birds that visit our feeding station, you can join us on the following weekends this winter, on January 7 and 21, February 4, 18, and 23, and March 1 and 4. See full details and schedule at http://www.nhnature.org/programs/calendar.php.

Winter Chickadees

By Dave Erler

Flickr/cdbtx

Winter is here; at least that’s what the chickadees are indicating. Even though the first official day of winter isn’t until December 21, the Black-capped Chickadees at the Science Center’s education building know differently. I use birds as my indicator of when the seasons change. Spring arrives for me when I see my first Tree Swallows. Summer is here when I hear the plaintive “peowee” of the Eastern Wood Pewee. Fall is marked by the waves of migrating drab-colored confusing warblers. Chickadees tell me it’s winter by the increase in the amount of black oil sunflower seed I go through in my bird feeders. In early autumn I fill a large tube feeder every other day. Now (the last week of November) the chickadees empty it by the end of the day. Of course other birds are also accepting the handout of sunflower seed, but even with casual observation it’s easy to note the number of pilfering visits the chickadees are making has markedly increased.

It’s fun to see the chickadees come to the feeders. Sometimes I’ll watch as a chickadee very methodically takes just one particular sunflower seed and retreats to a nearby branch. Lacking the strong cone-shaped beak typical of finches the chickadee is incapable of cracking the seed with just its beak. So once perched on the branch it transfers the seed from its beak to its feet. Cradling the seed between the feet it proceeds to chop with its beak to open the seed husk and then quickly consumes the energy-rich kernel. This method works fine but chickadees are better adapted to acrobatically hang upside down to glean insect eggs off the underside of branches than crushing seeds in their beaks.

Flickr/ jon.hayes

More often when I watch chickadees at the feeder I see them grab a seed and fly out of sight. If you are lucky and can follow one, you may be surprise by what you see. Many of these forays result in the sunflower seed being stored in tree bark or wedged into some other small crevice. Research has shown that one individual chickadee will cache hundreds of seeds and be able to recover the seeds over a month later. It isn’t a complete surprise to learn that chickadees not only have more feathers in the winter than summer but that they also have more brain cells in the fall and winter, presumably to help them remember where all those seeds are stored. Having to consume nearly their body weight in food each day during the winter means they are actively refueling their bodies the entire day.

As a bird bander I know from capturing and weighing Black-capped Chickadees in the morning and recapturing the same individuals in late afternoon that it’s not uncommon to find they have gained 1.5 to 2 grams of fat during the day. If you compare an 11-gram Black-capped Chickadee to a 200-pound human that’s equivalent to the human gaining 24 to36 pounds between waking and bedtime!

Besides their ability to eat and store food chickadees exhibit another remarkable adaptation. To survive the long winter night fast they actually lower their body temperature over 20 degrees F. Just like lowering the thermostat in your house saves energy chickadees lower their internal furnace. We do it to save money; chickadees do it to live to see another day.

I know these little black, white, and grey bundles of fluff and energy have been surviving winters for eons of time, but every time I see them on a cold winter morning I am still amazed. They are my symbol of winter and by surviving winter they somehow help me survive winter as well.