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The chickadees are a group of North American birds in the tit family included in the genus '' Poecile''. Species found in North America are referred to as chickadees, while other species in the genus are called tits. They are small-sized birds overall, usually having the crown of the head and throat patch distinctly darker than the body. They are at least 6 to 14 centimeters (2.4 to 5.5 inches) in size. Their name reputedly comes from the fact that their calls make a distinctive "chick-a-dee-dee-dee", though their normal call is actually "fee-bee," and the "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" call is an alarm call. The number of "dees" depends on the predator. The chickadee (specifically the
black-capped chickadee The black-capped chickadee (''Poecile atricapillus'') is a small, non-migratory, North American songbird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a passerine bird in the tit family, the Paridae. It is the state bird of Massachusetts and ...
''Poecile atricapillus'', formerly ''Parus atricapillus'') is the official bird for the US states of
Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
and
Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...
, the Canadian province of
New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
, and the city of
Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, maki ...
,
Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest T ...
. One
holarctic The Holarctic realm is a biogeographic realm that comprises the majority of habitats found throughout the continents in the Northern Hemisphere. It corresponds to the floristic Boreal Kingdom. It includes both the Nearctic zoogeographical reg ...
species is referred to by a different name in each part of its range: grey-headed chickadee in North America and Siberian tit in Eurasia.


Habitat

Chickadees are native to North America, where they are very common. In North America, the birds are found from the East Coast to the West Coast, and from Canada to Mexico. The habitat that chickadees prefer is mixed deciduous or coniferous forests, parks, open woods, cottonwood groves, willow thickets, and disturbed areas.


Memory

Mountain chickadees are food-caching birds. A single bird can hide as many as 80,000 individual seeds, which they retrieve during the winter. Their ability to do so depends on their
spatial memory In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is a form of memory responsible for the recording and recovery of information needed to plan a course to a location and to recall the location of an object or the occurrence of an event. Sp ...
of the locations. Birds that live in harsher conditions, where their ability to remember the location of food is more important, have been found to have better memory abilities, a larger
hippocampus The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic syste ...
, and more
neurons A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa ...
than chickadees that live in milder climates where food sources are easier to find without relying on memory.


Species

*
Black-capped chickadee The black-capped chickadee (''Poecile atricapillus'') is a small, non-migratory, North American songbird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a passerine bird in the tit family, the Paridae. It is the state bird of Massachusetts and ...
(''Poecile atricapillus'') * Boreal chickadee (''Poecile hudsonicus'') * Carolina chickadee (''Poecile carolinensis'') *
Chestnut-backed chickadee The chestnut-backed chickadee (''Poecile rufescens''), formerly ''Parus rufescens'', is a small passerine bird in the tit family, Paridae. It is found in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and western Canada, from southern Alaska t ...
(''Poecile rufescens'') * Grey-headed chickadee (''Poecile cinctus'') * Mexican chickadee (''Poecile sclateri'') * Mountain chickadee (''Poecile gambeli'')


References

* Bird common names {{Paridae-stub