The Birds That Visit Your Bird Feeder May Have A Terrific Memory

Your Bird Feeder

This is a fabulous article about the memories of birds. Click the link at the bottom to read the full article-it's well worth it. 

If someone calls you a “bird brain,” they don’t mean to compliment you. It turns out, however, that birds you see every day can accomplish astonishing feats of memory.

What’s truly amazing isn’t the sheer number of seeds chickadees can store, but that they remember most of them! Black-capped Chickadees have been observed storing close to 1,000 seeds in one day. That means thousands of seeds each winter. They've been tested to remember these locations for at least a month if not longer.

Bird brains: Feathered friends that boast incredible memories

Using RFID For Tracking Birds At Your Bird Feeder

Bird Feeder

The same technology used to locate lost pets is now being used to track common backyard birds. Scientists and students at the Cornell Lab have collected data on hundreds of thousands of feeder visits so far by Black-capped Chickadees and other birds. Tiny tags weighing less than one-tenth of a gram are attached to the birds' legs and are detected each time the birds visit specially-rigged feeders. Watch this in which David Bonter describes the radio frequency identification (RFID) technique and what we can learn by keeping track of who's coming to dinner.

Tracking Feeder Birds with RFID 

Birds At The Bird Feeder And Bird Bath

Your Bird Feeder

Black-Capped Chickadees, Chestnut-Backed Chickadees, and Nuthatches come to my bird-feeder and birdbath

Feeder Birds

Beak Deformities Being Studied

Your Bird Feeder

Fascinating study that has been going on about beak deformities. Scientists still don't know the cause.

The biologist team first began studying the beak deformities in black-capped chickadees in 1999. Crow beak deformities captured their attention soon after, so they launched the coastal studies project.

Mysterious beak deformities puzzle scientists

Migration Of The Songbirds

Your Bird Feeder

Excellent article about the migration of many songbirds.

Several times in the past month, I have stood in one place and counted black-capped chickadees passing. This morning (Oct. 26), in about an hour, my husband and I counted 285. All of these birds were moving from west to east along the Lake Ontario shore cliff west of Port Hope.

We're experiencing an irruption