Come to think of it, the Black-capped Chickadee is abundant at the Reifel Sanctuary near Ladner, but I seldom see Chestnut-backed there.

Barry Ulman
Bellingham, WA.



On Mar 27, 2012, at 11:01 AM, Wayne Weber wrote:

> Tweeters,
>
> A couple of minor corrections to Dennis Paulson?s comments about Black-capped Chickadees:
>
> (1) Black-caps are not common ?all around Vancouver Island?. They are abundant in the Vancouver area on the mainland, but are uncommon to rare on the Sunshine Coast (Sechelt and Pender Harbour area), farther north across Howe Sound. They are basically absent from the mainland coast north of the Sunshine Coast. They do come down a few of the major rivers (e.g. the Squamish and Bella Coola Rivers) to the heads of inlets, where they inhabit cottonwood stands along these large streams. However, along the northern part of Vancouver Island, where the Johnstone Strait is only a couple of miles wide (and it would be easy for chickadees to cross), there are NO Black-caps on the mainland coast, which in this area is virtually unbroken conifer forest. This would explain why Black-caps never got to Vancouver Island.
>
> You can check out the breeding distribution of Black-caps in BC by going to the BC Breeding Bird Atlas webpage at http://www.birdatlas.bc.ca/bcdata/maps.jsp and selecting ?Black-capped Chickadee? from the drop-down menu. So, far, there are no Atlas records of Black-caps on Vancouver Island or the Gulf Islands, and the absence of Black-caps on the mainland coast north of Greater Vancouver is striking.
>
> (2) The variant song of Black-capped Chickadees has not spread yet as far north as coastal BC or extreme northwestern WA. In Whatcom County, which I bird very frequently, I just hear the standard two-note ?fee-beee?. I?m not sure how far north this oddball song has spread from Oregon, where it apparently got started, but as Dennis said, it would be interesting to study the distribution of the variant song pattern and how it has changed over time.
>
> Wayne C. Weber
> Delta, BC
> contopus at telus.net
>
>
>
>

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