Mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), a North American bird in the tit family, store away food for later occasions. These birds are found at different elevations where varying winter conditions are experienced. Previous research showed that mountain chickadees living at harsher high elevations have bigger hippocampi, the part of the brain which plays an important role […]
Tag: chickadee
Chickadee Irruption in Central Florida!
Here in Central Florida we’ve grown accustomed to having an easy time identifying chickadees. If you see one, it’s a Carolina Chickadee. But this is no longer the case, as there has been a massive irruption of northern and western species of chickadees into Central Florida. The irruption was first noticed when the above photographed […]
Rain Day
Got a whole bunch of rain here today and therefore the birds got pretty soaked, which I always find rather cute. The Carolina Chickadee shakes it off, the Cardinal looks a little bummed, and the White-throated Sparrow just doesn’t care. Speaking of birds, I watched two chickadees this afternoon going all out in some courtship […]
Long winter’s nap
Grab forty winks. Saw logs. For a species that’s habitually short on shut-eye, we humans sure have come up with myriad ways to talk about it. We also spend a lot of time and money studying sleep, or the lack thereof. Yet, in spite of decades of inquiry, researchers still don’t have a good fix […]
Known Biters
For a brief time when we were first married, my wife worked at a daycare center. She mentioned one evening that some of the kids had “KB” annotated next to their names on some list they used to organize activities, with “KB” shorthand for “known biters.” Those known biters required just a bit more vigilance […]