The chickadees are a group of North American birds in the family Paridae included in the genus '' Poecile''. Species found in North America are referred to as chickadees; species found elsewhere in the world 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 "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, nonmigratory, North American passerine bird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a member of the Paridae family (biology), family, also known as tits. It has a distin ...

''Poecile atricapillus'', formerly ''Parus atricapillus'') is the official bird for the US state of

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, the Canadian province of

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

, as well as the cities of

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

, Alberta, and Regina,

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

. The chickadee is also the state bird of

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

, but a species has never been specified. A proposed bill in 2019 would have named the black-capped chickadee as the official species for Maine, but was unanimously voted down in committee. The de facto species for Maine remains the black-capped. 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 The grey-headed chickadee or Siberian tit (''Poecile cinctus''), formerly ''Parus cinctus'', is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread resident breeder throughout subarctic Scandinavia and the northern Palearctic, and a ...

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. Chickadees' preferred habitats include 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 (: hippocampi; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , 'seahorse'), also hippocampus proper, is a major component of the brain of humans and many other vertebrates. In the human brain the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, and the ...

, and more

neurons A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

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, nonmigratory, North American passerine bird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a member of the Paridae family (biology), family, also known as tits. It has a distin ...

(''Poecile atricapillus'') *

Boreal chickadee The boreal chickadee (''Poecile hudsonicus'') is a small passerine songbird in the tit (bird), tit family (biology), family Paridae. It is found in the boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and the northern United States and remains within this range ...

(''Poecile hudsonicus'') * Carolina chickadee (''Poecile carolinensis'') * Chestnut-backed chickadee (''Poecile rufescens'') *

Grey-headed chickadee The grey-headed chickadee or Siberian tit (''Poecile cinctus''), formerly ''Parus cinctus'', is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread resident breeder throughout subarctic Scandinavia and the northern Palearctic, and a ...

(''Poecile cinctus'') * Mexican chickadee (''Poecile sclateri'') * Mountain chickadee (''Poecile gambeli'')

References

{{Reflist, 30em, refs = {{cite book , title = The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories , url = https://archive.org/details/merriamwebsterne00merr , url-access = registration , year = 1991 , publisher = Merriam-Webster , location = Springfield, MA, USA , page
362
, isbn = 0-87779-603-3 * Bird common names