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The Chickadee Alarm Code
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Massachusetts' state bird is hiding food for winter. One seed per hiding spot.
Thousands of spots. And it remembers them.
In fall, its brain makes new cells in the part that handles memory.
On cold nights, it can let its body cool about 12 degrees to save fuel.
Now listen. Chick-a-dee-dee-dee. That's a code. The more dees, the bigger the danger.
And to a chickadee, a tiny pygmy owl is scarier than a big great horned owl.
For a pygmy owl, researchers heard up to 23 extra dees.
Here's the wild part. Other birds are listening. Nuthatches can read it. Play them a chickadee's tiny-owl warning, and they rush in to mob.
Count the dees.
When chickadees at your feeder start a long chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee, look around for a hawk or owl, and watch whether the nuthatches come too.
Data: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Mass Audubon, Barnea and Nottebohm (PNAS), National Wildlife, Templeton and colleagues (Science, PNAS) and the University of Washington.