13 fun facts about black-capped chickadees storing their food

Lori Schubring

For USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Here are some fun facts about black-capped chickadees you might not know!

• Chickadees have excellent coping tactics for surviving harsh winter weather. They cache foods and remember where they are hidden, have dense winter coats, diligently find excellent, well-insulated roosting cavities and can perform a regulated hypothermia to conserve energy overnight.

• The hippocampus (the spatial memory part of the brain) is proportionally larger in chickadees and other caching birds than in birds that do not cache food. This allows them to remember where they hide food for successful retrieval later.

• Chickadees remember which sites have been emptied by themselves or by others.

• Black-capped chickadees cache mostly seeds but also insects.

• They primarily cache in the fall, but will cache year round.

• Black-capped chickadees cache foods in and under bark, dead leaves, knotholes, clusters of pine needles, in gutters, under shingles, in the ground as well as the snow.

• While caching, black-capped chickadees may carry off several items at once; however, each food is cached in a separate location

• Black-capped chickadees can remember precisely where to find caches up to 28 days later.

• The more dominant black-capped chickadees cache more than the subordinate ones.

• Black-capped chickadees remember cache locations by using clues such as landmarks and sun compass orientation.

• Black-capped chickadees will wait to cache if they notice they are being watched, especially by other chickadees.

• Black-capped chickadees in northern climates have a larger hippocampus than their southern counterparts.

• The Black-capped chickadee primarily eats insects during the breeding season with some seed and fruits. The non-breeding season finds them eating about half animal and half vegetable matter like seeds, spiders, insects, and even the fat from carrion.

If you have any questions about feeding or attracting backyard birds, email us at wbuwausau@gmail.com or give us a call at 715-298-3140.

Happy birding!

Lori Schubring is the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop in Rib Mountain.