Birds › Backyard › Black-capped Chickadee

Black-capped Chickadee

Poecile atricapillus

Chickadees hide seeds in hundreds of places and remember where they put them.

In your real yard: Sunflower seed, suet, and a nest box with a 1 1/8 inch entrance hole.

Spot it in the game

Lives in the Backyard habitat (Eastern North America).

Black-capped Chickadee, Poecile atricapillus — Photo: iNaturalist user, CC0, via iNaturalist. Cut out from the original photo.

Black-capped Chickadee facts

Family: Chickadees and tits
Length: 5.1 in (13 cm)
Wingspan: 7.1 in (18 cm)
Weight: 0.4 oz (11 g)
Diet: Insects, spiders, seeds and berries.
Range: The northern half of the United States, Canada and Alaska.
Nest: A tree hole or nest box filled with moss and lined with soft fur.
Song: A whistled "fee-bee" and the famous "chick-a-dee-dee-dee"; more "dee" notes mean a bigger threat.
Active: by day
Status: Least Concern on the IUCN Red List: widespread and not at risk.

What the Black-capped Chickadee sounds like

Recording 1: Jonathon Jongsma, CC BY-SA 3.0, original on xeno-canto. Trimmed and cleaned of low background noise.

Recording 2: Doug Hynes, CC BY-SA 4.0, original on xeno-canto. Trimmed and cleaned of low background noise.

How to attract the Black-capped Chickadee

Feeder foods, favorite first: sunflower seed, suet, peanuts. Feeders that hold them: tube feeder, platform feeder and suet cage. Keep a bird bath full, too.

In the game: fill a feeder with sunflower seed, suet and peanuts and keep the bird bath full. It is a common visitor.

More: bird songs and calls, what to feed birds.