CHICKADEES

C is for chickadees. Carefree, charming, confident and confiding. Cheerful, cute, clever and competent. All of you who observe chickadees at your feeders or notice them as they go about their business of nesting and raising young know these characteristics. Many readers describe them as "interesting and one of my favorites."

They are indeed interesting birds and ones I believe that along with their cousins, the titmice, are universally beloved. In Europe, they're all called tits. In this country, there are black-capped and the Carolina chickadees, the Mexican chickadee that barely makes it into Arizona and New Mexico, the mountain chickadee found all over the West at the proper elevations, the chestnut-backed that ranges from northern California all the way along the coast to Alaska, and the boreal chickadee that extends all across Canada and normally gets only in to our most northern states.

In North America we can also lay claim to the Siberian tit, the rarest and most-sought by birdwatchers who go to great lengths to get to its territory in remote areas of the Yukon. Then, we also have the tufted titmouse in the East, as well as plain and bridled titmice in California and the Southwest.

Regardless of where they are encounted, they are all small, hardy birds with short bills, short wings and plumage that you can recognize immediately, even though there are distinct differences among all species except the black-capped and Carolina. The latter two, by the way, were considered to be one species until fairly modern times, so our inability to tell them apart easily is readily understood. All chickadees are active and agile birds, often hanging upside down from twigs to feed, and they are all thoroughly engaging. Reader after reader tells me how their chickadees wait impatiently for feeders to be refilled and how tame they become.

Chickadees are also leaders. Whenever we are out birding, we listen for chickadee chatter, for as surely as we find them, we will find a flock of other small birds. Invariably chickadees are accompanied by titmice, nuthatches, a downy woodpecker or two, kinglets and warblers. In the winter, this is one of the most reliable ways of finding a yellow-rumped warbler. A little bit of "spishing" from us brings the whole group into view, for chickadees are particularly curious (another "C" word) and quick to respond to any threat, be it a snake or a small owl. In fact, their insistent scolding has often led us to such predators.

Chickadees are year-round residents over most of their range. If you don't see them at your feeders as often during the summer as you did during the winter, it's only because they are dinning on more natural food like insects and caterpillars.

Chickadees have an interesting social structure in their lives. All is not quite as carefree as they would have you believe as they wing in and out from your feeders. According to studies of 23 flocks made by Susan Smith at Mt. Holyoke College over five winters in mid-1980s of the color-coded banded birds, during the spring and summer chickadees lead lives comparable to most other birds; that is, they live in monogamous breeding pairs, each of which stakes out and defends a territory against all other chickadees.

However, at the end of the summer, a major social shift occurs. Older birds gradually come together with several of the newly fledged young to form flocks. These flocks will occupy and defend a flock territory (usually two to three times the size of a breeding territory) against neighboring chickadee flocks.

So, what happens to chickadees that don't get included when the initial flocks form? They become floaters and must learn how to enter the system. Through careful monitoring of interactions between individual birds, Ms. Smith learned that both the regulars and the floaters had a clear-cut linear pecking order in each of the flocks and that most of the regulars were paired right from the start. Floaters ranged among three or four flocks, with an established place in the pecking order of each, always at the lowest ranking. Floaters also achieved rank among themselves which they retained regardless of the flock they were with. Floaters, all young birds that had never bred, remained unpaired.

Dominance in the pecking order was shown as occurring when one chickadee (A) supplanted another (B) from a perch; when A chased B; B tried unsuccessfully to supplant A; A and B arrived at a feeder simultaneously and A takes a seed first and leaves before B eats.

The significance to all her studies was discovering that when something happened to one of the regulars, the highest-ranking floater of the proper sex took his/her place! (By the way, can you quess what the two top-ranking causes of death were? Answer: Cats and sharp-shinned hawks.) That is how floaters of both sexes find their slots as regulars within the flock.

If you would like to read the details of Ms. Smith's research, seek out either Vol. 94, No. 3 of Natural History (1985) or the January-February 1986 issue of Bird Watcher's Digest.

So, the next time you watch the chickadees in your yard, you will recognize that perhaps they are not quite as confident and cheerful as they seem!