Black-capped Chickadee

• GeneralIt lowers its body temperature at night to save energy, and remembers thousands of caches.
• comunicaciónIts alarm call varies in the number of closing notes according to how great the threat is, encoding information about the size and danger of a nearby predator.
• Its alarm call encodes the level of threat in the number of final syllables: the more it adds, the more dangerous the predator, and other woodland bird species understand and respond to that code.
• Its brain grows in autumn: the region associated with spatial memory increases in size to manage the thousands of food caches it makes, and shrinks again in spring when it no longer needs it.
• It drops its body temperature by more than ten degrees on winter nights, a controlled torpor that lets it survive temperatures of forty below zero while weighing eleven grams.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Deciduous and mixed woodland, copses, parks and gardens of northern North America

Birth weight

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Size at birth

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Sexual maturity

5.9 months

Gestation / incubation

12 days

Litter / clutch size

7

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (en): Black-capped chickadee

Best time: All year round in North America, by day; in winter it joins mixed flocks and comes readily to feeders.