Birds
Mountain Chickadee
Poecile gambeli · also called mountain chickadees
High in a stand of coniferous forest well above the valley floor, a mountain chickadee hangs upside down from a cone, its bold white eyebrow stripe giving away its identity as it searches for a hidden seed it may have cached there itself weeks earlier.
Overview
The mountain chickadee, Poecile gambeli, is a small, hardy songbird native to high-elevation coniferous forest across a broad range of western North America. Its distinctive white eyebrow stripe, exceptional food-caching memory, and tolerance for cold, high-elevation winter conditions make it one of the more resilient and behaviourally sophisticated small songbirds of the western mountains.
A memory built for a snowy pantry
Scattering food across a territory each autumn only works if a bird can actually find it again months later, and the mountain chickadee’s sharp spatial memory is exactly what makes that gamble pay off through a long mountain winter.
Status
Least Concern — widespread and common across suitable high-elevation coniferous forest throughout western North America.
Mountain Chickadee: common questions
How can you tell a mountain chickadee from other chickadee species?
Look for a bold white stripe above the eye, a feature that sets this species apart from several other chickadee species with a plainer black cap and no eyebrow marking, combined with a whistled call generally more descending or lower-pitched than that of the closely related black-capped chickadee.
How good is the mountain chickadee's memory?
This species caches large numbers of food items across its territory each autumn and relies on spatial memory to relocate a significant share of them through the winter months, a memory capacity linked to seasonal changes in brain structure that has made chickadees generally a well-studied group for understanding avian spatial memory.
Why does the mountain chickadee live at such high elevations?
This species is closely associated with high-elevation coniferous forest and tolerates cold winter conditions that keep many other small songbirds restricted to lower elevations, allowing it to occupy mountain habitat throughout the year rather than needing to migrate to milder conditions in winter.
What does the mountain chickadee eat?
This species feeds on insects and spiders during the breeding season, switching to cached seeds and conifer seeds through the winter months when insect prey becomes scarce, a seasonal dietary shift supported by its exceptional food-caching memory.