Eat like a bird? Not Alaska's chickadees Imagine using all that Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing and pie just to keep warm tonight. Then imagine doing it all over again tomorrow. By Elizabeth Manning Daily News Reporter (Published November 23, 2000) When you stuff yourself today, think of the chickadees.
Black-capped chickadees pack on and lose 10 percent of their weight everyday. (Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)	To survive the cold days and long nights, these tiny songbirds binge daily. They gain up to 10 percent of their body weight every day and lose it all again while they sleep. Chickadees only weigh about 10 grams and gain about a gram of fat before nightfall, said Susan Sharbaugh, a researcher with the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. That's like a 150-pound person putting on and losing 15 pounds every day. Just imagine waking up tomorrow to find all the turkey, stuffing and pie gone, transformed into energy to keep you warm on a cold winter night. Then imagine doing it all over again. "That's what they use to fuel themselves overnight," Sharbaugh said. Because they're so small, "they live right on the edge." Two of Alaska's five species of chickadees are commonly found in Anchorage: black-capped and boreal. They are familiar residents -- gray, black and white with a black cap and throat -- and sing "chickadee-dee-dee" as they hop from branch to branch or flit between leafless birches.
They are among the dozen or so species of small songbirds that tough it out here all year. Other birds use similar winter survival techniques, but chickadees combine several tricks to "hedge their bets," Sharbaugh said. In addition to poking around continuously for food whenever the sun is up, the little birds lower their body temperatures considerably at night, going into a "nocturnal hypothermia" to save energy. And like most birds, they are amazingly efficient at storing body fat, to the point that their breasts puff up visibly by nighttime. "They didn't invent any new physiology; they're just cranking it up," Sharbaugh said. The chickadees' most visible winter survival technique is stashing thousands of seeds and insects in fall and sometimes winter, giving them an emergency stash for days when they can't find enough. They hide them mostly in the bark of trees.
Anchorage Birder Chris Maack Often Sees Chickadees At Her Feeders Late In The Afternoon. (Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)	To make this strategy work, they have highly developed memories. The hippocampus, the section of the brain responsible for memory, is larger in birds that cache seeds. Vladimir Pravosudov, another chickadee researcher at the University of California at Davis, is studying memory differences between black-capped chickadees captured in Anchorage and Fort Collins, Colo. He's guessing that the birds from Anchorage, where life is cold and harsh, will have better memories. Chickadees appear to have a talent for finding bird feeders. Colleen Handel, a chickadee researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Biological Science Center said she set out about 10 feeders in the Campbell Tract in October. The birds found every one within a week. Her son Kevin and his friend, Danny Watts, found the same thing when they set out feeders for a science project last winter on the Hillside. Tom Reale, who lives on the Hillside, said chickadees come in waves to a feeder on his deck, around noon usually. Reale has seen them stash the black sunflower seeds, pushing them beneath the bark of birch trees. They also fly seeds to a spruce tree, too, but Reale said he can't see what the birds are doing behind the boughs.
East Anchorage birder Chris Maack says chickadees usually arrive at her feeder just as it's getting dark. She hasn't seen them stashing seeds, but they usually take one last beakful before they fly away. Reporter Elizabeth Manning can be reached at emanning@adn.com or at 257-4323.