Birds

Chickadee

Poecile · also called chickadees

Least Concern → omnivoreinsectivore Temperate forest Mountains

A chickadee is a bird the weight of a few coins that stares winter down. It spends autumn hiding thousands of seeds around the forest, one at a time, then grows its brain to remember where they all are. It survives freezing nights by dropping its body temperature on purpose. And its cheerful little call is actually a coded threat report that other birds listen in on.

Overview

Chickadees are seven small birds in the genus Poecile, found only in North America, each with a black cap and bib and white cheeks. They are the New World branch of the tit family — a chickadee is, in every meaningful sense, a tit. They eat insects and spiders in summer and switch to seeds, berries, and suet in winter, when they are among the tamest and most frequent birds at feeders.

A memory that grows

A black-capped chickadee caches hundreds to thousands of food items a day in autumn, one per spot, scattered across its territory, and it survives winter by remembering them. Each autumn the brain’s spatial-memory centre, the hippocampus, physically enlarges and grows new neurons, then shrinks in spring. Chickadees from harsher northern climates have bigger hippocampi and better memories than southern ones.

The coded call

The “chick-a-dee” call is a warning system with grammar. The number of dee notes signals how dangerous a predator is — more dees for a small, agile hawk than for a big slow owl — and other birds understand and respond accordingly. On freezing nights a chickadee fattens up by a tenth of its body weight, roosts alone in a cavity, and lets its temperature fall 10 to 12°C into controlled hypothermia.

Status

Least Concern — abundant, and several species thrive in wooded suburbs. Local concerns include the declining boreal chickadee and a warming-driven northward shift of the Carolina chickadee into black-capped range, where the two hybridise.

Chickadee: common questions

What is the difference between a chickadee and a tit?

Very little, biologically. Chickadees are simply the North American members of the tit family, Paridae, and they sit in the genus Poecile alongside several Eurasian birds that are called tits, such as the willow tit and marsh tit, which a chickadee closely resembles in size, shape, behaviour, and voice. The name chickadee is North American and comes from the call; the name tit is the older British term. If the black-capped chickadee lived in Europe it would certainly be called a tit. The blue tit and great tit of Europe are close cousins in the same family but different genera.

How do chickadees remember where they hide food?

With a specialised, seasonally flexible memory. A chickadee makes hundreds of separate caches and remembers the individual locations using the hippocampus, a brain region devoted to spatial memory. In autumn, as caching increases, the hippocampus physically enlarges and grows new neurons, boosting the bird's capacity, then shrinks back in spring. Chickadees living where winters are severe, and where a good memory is a matter of life and death, have larger hippocampi and outperform southern chickadees on memory tests. They can recall not just where a cache is, but roughly what is in it and whether they have already taken it.

What does the chickadee call actually mean?

The familiar chick-a-dee call is used to rally the flock, keep contact, and, above all, to raise the alarm, and it carries surprisingly precise information. When a chickadee spots a perched predator it adds dee notes to the end of the call, using more dee notes for smaller, more dangerous predators such as the northern pygmy-owl or sharp-shinned hawk and fewer for large, less agile ones like a great horned owl. The number of dees predicts how strongly other chickadees, and eavesdropping birds of other species, will mob the threat.

Are chickadees friendly, and can I hand-feed them?

Chickadees are among the boldest and most curious of common birds and are one of the easiest wild species to train to take food from an open hand, usually sunflower seeds, especially in winter when food is scarce and they already know your feeder. It takes patience, standing still near the feeder for a while each day until a bird risks the first landing. The chickadee is not being tame in a pet sense; it is making a calculated trade of risk for a reliable, high-value food. Once one bird in the flock learns, others often follow.

Sources & further reading

Written by HideShark Editorial Team · reviewed by HideShark Science Desk. Published September 11, 2026. Last updated September 11, 2026.

Quick facts

Scientific name: Poecile
Diet: Mostly insects and spiders in the warmer months, especially caterpillars, aphids, and insect eggs gleaned from twigs and bark, switching to seeds, berries, and animal fat in winter, when chickadees are among the commonest visitors to feeders for sunflower seeds and suet
The North American tits: Chickadees are seven species of small, round-bodied, big-headed birds in the genus Poecile, found only in North America, each with a neat dark cap and bib and white cheeks, and closely related to, and sometimes still grouped with, the tits of Europe and Asia
Thousands of hidden meals: A black-capped chickadee hides hundreds to thousands of food items a day in autumn, one seed or insect per spot, tucked into bark crevices, moss, curled leaves, and lichen all across its territory, and it depends on remembering these many scattered sites to survive the winter
A brain that grows and shrinks: Each autumn the part of a chickadee's brain used for spatial memory, the hippocampus, grows larger and adds new nerve cells as food-caching ramps up, then shrinks again in spring, and chickadees from harsher northern climates have bigger hippocampi and sharper memories than those from mild areas
The call is a code: The chick-a-dee call is a warning system with grammar. The number of dee notes on the end signals how dangerous a predator is, with more dees for a small, agile, threatening hawk or pygmy-owl than for a large, slow one, and other birds nearby understand the information and act on it
Surviving the freezing night: To get through subfreezing nights a chickadee packs on fat each day until it is up to a tenth heavier by dusk, fluffs out its feathers, roosts alone in a tree cavity, and drops into a controlled hypothermia, letting its body temperature fall by 10 to 12 degrees Celsius to save energy
The core of the winter flock: Outside the breeding season chickadees live in small flocks with a strict dominance order, and these flocks form the nucleus of the mixed feeding parties of nuthatches, titmice, kinglets, and woodpeckers that move through the winter woods, with the chickadees acting as the noisy lookouts
Range: Forests, woodlands, and wooded neighbourhoods across North America, from the tree line in Alaska and Canada south through the United States to the mountains of Mexico, with the black-capped chickadee across the north, the Carolina chickadee in the southeast, the mountain and chestnut-backed chickadees in the West, and the boreal and grey-headed chickadees in the far northern conifer forest.
Conservation status: Least Concern → ≈ Chickadees are abundant and familiar, and the black-capped and Carolina chickadees in particular do well around people, using nest boxes and feeders and living in wooded suburbs and city parks, with most species stable or increasing. There are local pressures. The boreal chickadee has declined at the southern edge of its range, the chestnut-backed chickadee depends on moist old coniferous forest that is being logged, and across the eastern United States a warming climate is pushing the Carolina chickadee north into black-capped territory, where the two hybridise in a narrow, shifting zone. Feeder studies also suggest that some human foods high in trans fats can harm the birds in the wild