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Long Island field note

Black Capped Chickadee

Bird: black capped chickadeeObserved May 1, 2022
Black Capped Chickadee
Photograph from the Long Island Birds collection.

The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is a small, nonmigratory, North American songbird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests.

It is a passerine bird in the tit family, the Paridae. It is the state bird of Massachusetts and Maine in the United States, and the provincial bird of New Brunswick in birds. It is well known for its ability to lower its body temperature during cold winter nights, its good spatial memory to relocate the caches where it stores food, and its boldness near humans (sometimes feeding from the hand).