Black-capped chickadee

While most birds have long since fled for warmer places, the chickadee is still here at forty below, cheerfully working the feeder and calling out its own name. It is the songbird that makes a Manitoba January feel friendly. In spring it trades the feeder for new buds and insects, and by summer it is flitting through the branches with a beak full of food for nestlings.

Black-capped chickadees stay in Manitoba all year, and they have tricks to survive the cold: at night they can lower their body temperature to save energy, and in fall they hide thousands of seeds, each remembered by location, while the memory centre of their brain grows to keep track. A chickadee weighs only about 11 grams. Its chick-a-dee call carries information too: more dee notes at the end means a bigger threat nearby.

Black-capped chickadee perched on a bare branch against a green background

Photos

  • Black-capped chickadee perched on a bare branch against a green background
  • Black-capped chickadee on a frosty metal hook in light snow
  • Black-capped chickadee perched on a curved metal hook, facing the camera
  • Black-capped chickadee clinging to a thin stalk
  • Small chickadee on frosted branches against a blue sky
  • Black-capped chickadee on a branch with a soft, blurred background
  • Black-capped chickadee perched on a branch among red berries
  • Black-capped chickadee perched on a red daylily
  • Black-capped chickadee taking flight from orange daylilies
  • Black-capped chickadee on a leafy branch with its wings blurred
  • Black-capped chickadee perched on a red seed feeder
  • Black-capped chickadee on a feeder as a hummingbird hovers nearby

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