Hello Tweeters and OBOL,

I'd like to thank Sue Trevathan of Vashon Island, WA, for calling my
attention to this thread.

And, I'd like to thank Dennis Paulson for compiling these responses. As a
co-author of a couple of BNA accounts, and a current reviser of one, I am
wondering how the next generation of BNA can most efficiently harvest all
the great information, such as these reports, from the birding lists around
the continent. It will certainly be a major task to scan all the posts for
relevant data, but there is so much good information on these lists.

On to these chickadees, I have noticed CBCH dominance of BCCH, too. Just
the other day, in fact. The probable reason it wasn't picked up in the CBCH
BNA is that the primary authors, Don Dahlsten and Lenny Brennan, both
worked on the species in central California, outside the range of BCCH. I
used to think of the BCCH as the most pugnacious of chickadees, but that
was based on intraspecific interactions I now surmise. Not only are they
dominated by the smaller CBCHs, they are dominated by the smaller Carolina
Chickadees. Tom Grubb and his students at Ohio State have convincingly
shown this, and offer it as an explanation for the northward shift of the
hybrid zone in Ohio during recent decades. Female blackcaps seem to prefer
dominant males, even when they're of another species.

Back to the CBCH BNA,
Sandy Gaunt and I wrote the vocalization section from east of the
Mississippi, from tapes made on my occasional visits to, yes, California.
One of the mysteries we needed to solve was the true identity of the
"whistled" song attributed to the CBCH on the record that came with the
1983, first, edition of the NGS field guide. Probably any of you could have
answered the question easily, but I didn't know any of you at the time. It
was a BCCH, recorded in Albany, Oregon. The existence of the BCCH song
dialects of the Willamette Valley, and perhaps farther north, appear to
have been virtually unknown outside the Pacific Northwest until recently.
Don Kroodsma has set the record straight, and even offered a plausible
hypothesis for why the song of the BCCH is so uniform across most of the
continent, but not here in the PNW. That's in his recent and fascinating
book The Singing Life of Birds.

Which gets to my question:

What is the geographic extent of Black-capped Chickadee song dialects in
the Pacific Northwest?

The answer is out there in Tweeters/OBOL-land. Just send me your emails,
cards and letters, and I'll try to make a map.

The continental dialect is two pure whistles at different pitches, the
first higher than the second, the second faintly divided, so that it can be
rendered quite fairly as "hey sweetie." The westside dialect, or dialects,
are more variable, and don't include "hey sweetie," which, lamentably,
aptly describes the most familiar song of the Mountain Chickadee in eastern
Oregon. (What about Washington?)

Drop me a line and let me know what the chickadees in your area sing.
recordings and sound clips are welcome.

One more thing......GARGLES
Blackcaps, Mountains, Carolinas, and several Eurasian chickadee species
have three major kinds of vocalizations: whistled songs, chick-a-dee calls,
and gargles.

CBCH really doesn't have a whistled song. (Right?)
The literature has a few sparse references to a trilled song, which I have
not encountered in 6 springs with CBCH all around me.

It has a very serviceable chick-a-dee call.

While compiling the BNA, we valiantly searched tapes for a CBCH gargle, and
came up with a few. In 5+ years here, though, I have not encountered any,
despite daily exposure to CBCH.

Until day before yesterday. A few days ago I heard a CBCH calling excitedly
with the chickadee call while a BCCH gargled furiously. I didn't look, but
I did take note of the two species calling excitedly at once. Day before
yesterday it happened again. I did look. While a BCCH chickadeed 15 yards
away (just to make it confusing), I looked into a nearby bush to see one
CBCH giving a chickadee call and a second giving a blackcap gargle! I saw
the bill move. I have it on video. At least I thought that was a blackcap
gargle. I thought I had narrowed that sound down to blackcaps. How many of
these gargles I have heard over the past 5+ years that were not made by
blackcaps I now realize I don't know. I have been impressed since moving
here with the lack of variation in blackcap gargles. BCCH in the east are
supposed to have repertoires of gargles. I know that Carolinas each have
about 6 distinct types, and these often are not shared with neighbors. But
here, one gargle type only. Shared by two species.......??

So, my questions is:

Do the Chestnut-backed Chickadees where you live use a gargle call? Does it
sound like the local BCCH gargle call?

Many thanks,
Arch McCallum
Eugene, Oregon (for 5 years and 3 months)





At 02:48 PM 4/10/2006, Dennis Paulson wrote:
>I'm pleased with the response I got to my comment that Chestnut-backed
>Chickadees seemed to be dominant to Black-capped Chickadees at my feeders.
>As this isn't a controversial subject, I'm assuming the responders won't
>mind if I quote them, in the order received. It certainly looks as if what
>I observed is widespread, yet it's not included in the Birds of North
>America accounts for either species.
>
>"I've not noticed that pattern on my feeder, but I have noticed
>differences between the two species. The CB tend to be more 'cautious' at
>the feeder, more prone to grab a seed and fly to a bush to eat it, rather
>than eating from the feeder like the BC will. And the 2 species are
>seldom at my feeder at the same time. It seems that the BC will fly in at
>different times than the CB are around (or vice versa). When they are
>around at the same time (not often) it seems that the CB are more likely
>to move away than the BC, but that could be just because they are more
>cautious at the feeder. I'll watch for an dominance behaviour from now on,
>though." Guy McWethy
>
>"Yes, I have the same thing in my yard. The chestnut-backed chickadees
>will cut the line on the black-capped ones, and pretty much act like the
>suet feeder and the tree it hangs from belong to them." Liz Copeland
>
>"As per your posting on Tweeters...at my cabin I definitely see the
>Chestnut-backed Chickadees dominate the Black-capped and I also see the
>Chestnuts wait for certain others to come to the feeders and walnuts
>first. It is as though they have a "take a number" system and wait for
>their turn in their line of dominance. Sometimes if one "misreads" its
>turn and get to the feeder another will come in a chase it away while it
>takes a seed." Idie Ulsh
>
>"I also have noticed this, and for the second year in a row, the
>Black-capped try to occupy the chickadee house, but are ousted by the
>Chestnut-backed." Dawn Bailey
>
>"I have noticed the same thing. Chestnut-backs are much bolder than
>Black-caps. They are always the first to investigate some new food source,
>and will let me get much closer to the feeders before flying off. A small
>group of chickadees has been eating pine nuts out of my hand, and the
>group this past winter mostly consisted of 5 Chestnut-backs and one
>Black-capped. And the BC always waited until all the CB had flown off
>before coming forward. Now, however, only one CB is still coming." Christy
>Anderson
>
>"I too have noticed that Black-capped Chickadees wait their turn at my
>feeders, even the one with several openings. And, yes, I've seen the
>Chestnut-backed Chickadees "elbow" their way in on the oh so polite
>Black-caps." Barbara Johnson
>
>"Yes,I've noticed the same thing: the Chestnut-backed seem to always take
>dominance over our Black-capped on the feeders outside our kitchen
>windows. However, I guess I always put it down to the fact that we have
>more of the former--and an occasional belligerent junco will chase either
>of them off! " Murray Hansen
>
>"When I was an undergrad in New Hampshire, I did a project for my animal
>behavior class looking at aggression and dominance in mixed-species
>flocks. The species I saw were black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse,
>and white- and red-breasted nuthatches. My project was limited in
>duration and scope, but it seemed that the chickadees and titmice tended
>to approach the feeder first, but that the nuthatches would then usurp
>them. I described it as a parasitic social relationship where the
>chickadees and titmice located food resources and then the nuthatches took
>over and feasted. After much more training in the study of animal
>behavior, I would certainly hesitate to make such claims based on the
>small amount of data I collected (a week or so of feeder visits at a
>single feeder by an unknown number of flocks)." Ryan O'Donnell
>
>"I don't have any direct experience with these two species together so I
>tried to look up any past published articles regarding interactions
>between the two. The only thing I could find was a study looking at
>interactions between Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees. They found
>that Black-cappeds generally dominated encounters at feeders with
>Mountains but that it really varied and depended on sex, experience in the
>area, and other factors. I also found a study that looked at sympatric
>habitat use by Chestnut-backed and Black-capped and they found no
>aggressive interactions between the two species. The author concluded
>that these two species are well separated in foraging areas within the
>same habitat (CBCH foraging high in canopy and in conifers compared to
>BCCH foraging lower and in deciduous trees) and this limits the
>interaction between them and reduces competition. Interesting that you
>witness CBCH being dominant as I would have predicted BCCH being dominant
>due to size as well." Jeff Kozma
>-----
>Dennis Paulson
>1724 NE 98 St.
>Seattle, WA 98115
>206-528-1382
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