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Chickadees Sound the Alarm

The beautiful chick-a-dee-dee-dee from above may not be the black-capped chickadee's happy song. He may be warning his friends about the cat creeping close to the perch, according to a new study.

This study has shown that the number of dees in a black-capped chickadee's call can communicate a predator's size and threat to others. A predator, such as a cat on the ground, may trigger a call with 5 to 10 extra dees, whereas a more dangerous predator can warrant more than 20 extra syllables.

"With something really dangerous, such as a pygmy-owl perched near some chickadees in our aviary, we heard as many as 23 added dees," says Chris Templeton, a biology doctoral student at the University of Washington and lead author of the study.

The birds also altered the sound of the call, though in ways inaudible to humans.

Detailed in the June 24 issue of the journal Science, the study was conducted using 15 live chickadee predators, perched or on leashes, in an outdoor, seminatural aviary.

Considered to have one of the most complex calls in the animal kingdom by scientists, black-capped chickadees have also shown that they know who the most threatening predators are. Calls differed with the approach of a pygmy-owl versus a great horned owl. The chickadees showed more warning with the fast, maneuverable pygmy owl than the large, slow great horned owl. The test chickadees completely ignored the docile bobwhite.

The call can also be a call to arms, bringing a whole flock of birds to mob the sitting predator and drive it away.