Chickadees operate on cache plan Birds difficult to photograph because of grab-and-go eating habits

I never tire of watching the antics of black-capped chickadees. They are forever on the move, never staying still for more than a few seconds. This is the key to their survival, but it sure does provide a challenge in photographing them.

I’ve been trying out my new camera and have come up with lovely shots of empty feeder perches and feeding stations – places where a second before a chickadee had been. It’s a good thing the camera is digital – I shudder to think of all the film I would have wasted!

Certain other birds find a food source and sit and eat for a while, and are therefore easy to photograph. Goldfinches, house and purple finches, and redpolls come to mind. Once they gain a perch at a feeder, they don’t budge until they are startled or until a higher-ranking member of the flock comes to displace them.

Not the chickadees – they’re more the grab-and-run type. Only rarely have I ever seen them dismember and devour a sunflower seed while at the feeder.

This behavior reflects the chickadee’s foraging habits and propensity for hoarding food. Often they will fly in, select a seed, and retire to nearby trees or shrubs to eat their prize. Seeking cover to consume a meal means you are less likely to be picked off by a predator.

Chickadees are also birds that routinely cache their food. In “The Birds of North America” species accounts, Susan M. Smith references several studies of food-caching ability by these tough little birds. Researcher D.F. Sherry found the hippocampus – the area of the brain responsible for spatial memory – is proportionately larger in the chickadee (and other birds that cache food) than in birds that don’t engage in this behavior.

Sherry and C.L. Hitchcock also have documented that chickadees remember where they’ve stored food up to a month later. They are selective in what storage items they retrieve: they’ll recover higher-quality food first. In addition, they’ll remember which caches they or others have emptied already – no wasting time and energy seeking food that isn’t there.

Smart little birds, aren’t they?

Chickadees employ a variety of methods when searching for food, and will seemingly contort themselves to get it. Ever see one hanging upside down on a branch or feeder? Specialized leg muscles enable them to perform this feat.

Another interesting, if unrelated, tidbit about chickadees concerns the apparent similarity between males and females. To our eyes, the males of many other bird species display striking plumage, while the females are dull and drab. Male and female chickadees are almost impossible to tell apart without taking in-hand measurements. Or are they?

In a fascinating article written by Peter Christie for “Canadian Geographic,” biologists used a spectrometer to view the ultraviolet color in the plumages of both sexes. What they found was that “male chickadees are visually dazzling compared to females, with brighter whites and greater contrast.”

Cameras and other optical aids may enable us to see more, but we’ll never have a bird’s incredible range and acuity of sight.

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com