Chickadees

Squirreler’s question about identifying Great Tits versus Blue Tits made me think about Chickadees and Titmice.  The Chickadees and Titmice are the North American equivalent of the birds known in the UK as ‘Tits’.

http://www.wildlifeuk.net/how-to-t-370.html

 There are seven species of chickadees to be found in the United States:

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapilus)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/680/_/Black-capped_Chickadee.aspx

Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/820/_/Carolina_Chickadee.aspx

Mountain Chickadee (Poecile gambeli)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/818/_/Mountain_Chickadee_Breeding_Male.aspx

Boreal Chickadee (Poecile hudsonica)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/815/_/Boreal_Chickadee.aspx

Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/119/_/Chestnut-backed_Chickadee.aspx

Gray-headed Chickadee or Siberian Tit (Poecile cincta)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/816/_/Gray-headed_Chickadee.aspx

Mexican Chickadee (Poecile sclateri)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/819/_/Mexican_Chickadee.aspx

The whatbird site has excellent voice recordings of all the species. 

I have seen all but two of the seven species–Mexican Chickadees are simply not found anywhere near my state, and the Siberian Tit is found only in the state of Alaska, and far northern Canada.  For some reason, the Chickadees  all have black/white/gray/rufous colour schemes, whereas the tits to be found in the UK are generally brightly coloured.

 Ever since I first saw Blue Tits and Great Tits in the UK, I’ve wondered why the New World equivalents are so…plain.  It’s not that the chickadees are dull, they just aren’t colourful. 

This is a wonderful site on just about any question you can think of about chickadees:

http://home.jtan.com/~jack/ckd.html

 But still no answer as to why chickadees are ‘drab’, and the tits found in the UK are not (well, some are, but you know what I mean). 

But people here love chickadees just as much as people in the UK love the tits.  Chickadees are unstintingly cheerful and busy.  They don’t stop, even during the frosty chill of winter.  They have a lovely, happy call–chick a dee dee dee, and variants on that theme.

The chickadees can be determined by call alone.  The Chestnut-backed has a raspier voice.  So does the Mountain, but it’s not found in the same environment as the Chestnut-backed.  The local chickadees for me are the Black-capped and the Chestnut-backed.  Those are the two I am trying to entice to the feeding station.  I still have not tempted anyone to test my feeder.  I am SO disappointed…

 Perhaps tomorrow they will come?