Mountain Chickadee
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Paridae
Genus: Poecile
Species: gambeli
**Audio Coming Soon**
Description
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Length: 5.25"
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Wing span: 8.5"
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Weight: 0.39 oz (11 grams)
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Small, short billed bird with a black cap and bib
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White cheeks and eyestripe
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Back is unstreaked gray, wings and tail are dark grayish
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Underparts are grayish white with a rather long tail
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Sexes as well as juveniles are silimar in plumage
Factoids:
- The Mountain Chickadee is one of the most common birds of the Western montane coniferous forests. It is distinguished from all other North American chickadees by its white eyestripe
- The nest cup of a Mountain Chickadee is molded in fur and then plugged with looser fur. The unincubated eggs are covered with the fur plug while the female is not in the nest
- Juvenile Mountain Chickadees leave their home territories about three weeks after fledging. The young birds settle in a new area by late summer, and usually remain in that spot all their lives
- Like many members of its family the Mountain Chickadee hides food to eat later. It hides seeds and occasionally insects under bark, in pine needle clusters, and in the ground. An unusual cache site was inside a moth cocoon, where the seeds forced into it killed the pupae inside
***3 Fledgling Mountain Chickadee photos bottom right***
All photographs and audio clips are ©Jamie Mullin 2006
Sources: Cornell Lab of Ornithology & The Sibley Guide to Birds.
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