Black-Capped Chickadee
Johännah Larsen (2007)

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) are one of several types of small birds that can be found on campus at Willamette. Besides the Willamette Valley, this songbird can be found across North America, from Southern Canada to the northern half of the U.S. Their favored habitat contains broadleaf trees, or woodlands around rivers, but they also can live in cities. In its Canadian range, Black-capped Chickadees only live in the mountains.

The Black-capped Chickadee is approximately five inches from beak to tail. These birds can be identified by their color patterns because of the distinctive dark “cap” that gives the chickadees their name. The also have large white streaks along the sides of their heads, their backs after grayish with white feather details, and their chest color ranges from rusty to white. Males and females are similar in appearance. Black-capped chickadees can also be found by their call, which is described as “chick-a-dee-dee”. The birds can make very slight variations in the rhythm and tone of the call to change its meaning. If you want to see a Black-capped chickadee on Willamette’s campus, try looking in the garden corridor between Olin and Collins Halls, or the Art building on the Northwest corner of campus.

Black-capped chickadees are usually very active and aggressive. A flock, usually four to twelve individuals, will establish a hierarchical “pecking order”, with the most aggressive individuals as the alpha male and female. The chickadees are mostly carnivorous and hunt insects, caterpillars, spiders, and slugs. It is a voracious eater and has been described as “one of the most important pest killers in the forest and orchard.”(Lawrence) In the winter, when food supplies are low, their diet changes to seeds (from birdfeeders as well as from plants), which they cache in a manner similar to Western Scrub Jays. Black-capped chickadees have good memory capacity and keep track of thousands of cached items for as long as a month.

Chickadees will perform courtship during February and March, and then nest in the spring. The fest will be inside an appropriate tree hole and filled with soft fibers. The females will lays five to ten small, rounded eggs. The eggs are incubated for approximately two weeks, during which time the males will bring food to the female, but she also hunts on her own. The chicks are completely featherless and helpless when they hatch. Both parents spend a lot of energy feeding the chicks and cleaning the nest by removing the chick droppings. Two or three weeks later, the chicks are ready to leave the nest. Black-capped chickadees have some predators, such as bird-hunting hawks, Northern Shrike, snakes, and mammals like weasels and squirrels who are interested in raiding chickadee nests.

"All About Birds." 2003. Cornell Lab of ornithology. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Black-capped_Chickadee.html.

"Black-Capped Chickadee." Bird of the Week. 1998. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/bow/bcch/.

Lawrence, Louise. "Black-Capped Chickadee." Hinterland Who's Who. 2007. Canadian Wildlife Service. http://www.ffdp.ca/hww2.asp?id=29&cid=7.