Hello, tweets.

I noted a few postings on chickadees with brown caps recently. I've
just been watching young Chestnut-backed Chickadees at my suet/
sunflower feeders. The adults have dark brown caps, easily mistaken
for black in dull PNW lighting conditions, but the brown can be seen
if you look closely. These young birds, on the other hand, have
medium-brown caps that would never be called black. In the sun you
might even call them light brown. Seeing them from above whenever I
look out the window makes this obvious. To someone with no color
vision, the cap might look lighter than the dark chestnut back.

Another difference from Boreal Chickadee, not mentioned I think, is
that Chestnut-backs have very dark sides, Boreals paler. Boreals are
also larger and longer-tailed, and indeed a good field mark is the
much-reduced size of their white cheek patch in comparison with all
other chickadees. Several Boreal Chickadees reported well outside the
range of that species in the past have turned out to be oddly colored
Black-caps.

As I have reported before, the Chestnut-backs, even the young ones,
routinely displace the Black-caps from the feeders.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net

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