aromano17's Journal

I enjoy walking downtown on my way to work, and recently after learning the call of the Black-capped Chickadee I realized that there were a TON of chickadees in the portion of Burlington between the UVM campus and Church Street area. The frequency of calls was different every single time, but on this particular day, I didn't hear much in comparison to other days. Perhaps it was because of the snow that was consistently coming down, or the temperature, which didn't rise above 25ºF. However, there were still a couple who decided to chirp.
Most days, I never really saw any fly, even though I was trying my hardest to see them, but I remember a little while ago last semester, there was a Black-capped Chickadee banding that I went too. Here was my top experience with chickadees, and their patterns of flight.
From what I can remember, and some helpful videos, chickadees have that songbird characteristic of small, fast darting movements. This I assume is due to their smaller size (like mice), and it would be easier for them to navigate through denser vegetation like neighborhood brambles and bushes. It also appears that chickadees do the "tuck and dive" routine, where they float up with a flap, but then tuck the wings in a dive-bomb motion down and repeat. Their wing shape has finger-like tips, which I assume would be used to manipulating the air current, allowing them to do that darting like motion and high agility.
Now this particular species of chickadee does a great job at finding food, and in a highly populated area like the "Hills of Burlington," it would make sense that there would be a higher population of birds, due to more trash (food scraps), and bird feeders. I can make the prediction that with warmer weather, these Black-capped Chickadees would be everywhere.
-aromano17