{"id":78471,"date":"2019-11-19T04:57:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T11:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=78471"},"modified":"2019-11-19T07:59:41","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T14:59:41","slug":"mountain-chickadee-acrobatic-feeding-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/19\/mountain-chickadee-acrobatic-feeding-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Chickadee Acrobatic Feeding Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given their nearly identical, interesting and even amusing feeding technique Mountain chickadees almost seem like wannabe nuthatches.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I posted an image of a Red-breasted Nuthatch hanging upside down from a Douglas Fir cone after extracting one of its seeds. That nuthatch photo and the following five Mountain Chickadee photos were all taken two days ago as the birds were foraging for food in the same area in the mountains and mostly in the same tree.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Like nuthatches their typical feeding technique this time of year is to extract seeds from the cones. When the seeds are found between scales higher up on a cone they cling vertically to the side of the cone but for lower seeds they have to hang upside down from the bottom of the cone in a process known as “hang-gleaning”.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

Extracting seeds from between the cone scales isn’t easy but they seem to be very proficient at it. Hanging from a single foot appears to be no problem for them so their feet must be well adapted for holding on.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

They use a similar technique while feeding in junipers.<\/p>\n

This species eats insects and spiders during warm months and mostly conifer seeds when it’s cold. I find no mention in the literature of them eating plant parts other than seeds or occasionally fruits so I’m slightly puzzled about this bird appearing to eat juniper leaves\/needles. Who knows, maybe that’s something else in its bill.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

Leaving the cone safely can be a little tricky with all the nearby obstructions.<\/p>\n

One of the few differences I believe I’ve noticed in the feeding technique of nuthatches and chickadees is that chickadees don’t seem to hang upside down vertically from the cone and then just drop straight down head first when they leave like nuthatches often do (as seen in the nuthatch pose in yesterday’s post<\/a>). Instead they usually twist their bodies into a right-side-up orientation as they’re leaving the cone. This bird has released one foot from the cone and is about to rotate 180\u00b0 as it flies away.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

This bird chose to let go of the cone with both feet at the same time resulting in a free fall just before it rotated to right-side-up in the air.<\/p>\n

Notice the seed in its bill with the bract still attached. From what I observed I believe these birds, including the nuthatches, were caching most of the seeds they gathered rather than eating them on the spot.<\/p>\n

After all, it’s going to be a long winter.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: For those who may be unfamiliar with this species the most obvious field mark distinguishing Mountain Chickadees from the very closely related and more common Black-capped Chickadees is their white supercilium stripe over the eye which interrupts the black cap.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Addendum: In the end I couldn’t resist. I had to see what the 3rd photo would look like if I turned it upside down so the chickadee is right side up. Would it look “normal”? Or not. And if not, why?<\/em><\/p>\n

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To me it doesn’t look as normal as I thought it might. I think it’s because of the shadow on the top of the bird. To get that shadow up there the sun would have to be far below the horizon which just doesn’t happen when there’s direct sunlight on the bird.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I dunno, maybe flat-earthers believe it could happen. Somehow…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given their nearly identical, interesting and even amusing feeding technique Mountain chickadees almost seem like wannabe nuthatches.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,392,4807],"tags":[4328,4326,4325,3775,4827,2352,4048,2051,4808,311],"class_list":["post-78471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-mountain-chickadee","tag-bract","tag-cone","tag-douglas-fir","tag-feeding-behavior","tag-flat-earther","tag-hang-gleaning","tag-hanging-upside-down","tag-mountain-chickadee","tag-poecile-gambeli","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/mountain-chickadee-6458-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kpF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}