Black-capped chickadee
Poecile atricapillus
Bird
Small, year-round resident songbird of northern North America and a familiar feeder visitor. It is an insectivore through the breeding season — parents feed nestlings almost entirely on caterpillars and other arthropods gleaned from foliage and bark, which is why the keystone native trees that host the most caterpillars (oaks, cherries, willows, and aspens/cottonwoods) directly determine how many chickadees a landscape can raise. In fall and winter it shifts to roughly half plant matter (seeds and small fruits) and caches food in bark crevices for later retrieval. A cavity nester, it excavates or enlarges holes in soft, rotted snags and readily uses nest boxes.
Conservation
IUCN Red List: Least Concern, with a large range and a stable-to-increasing population. Common and widespread; no special protection status. Its value here is as the textbook example of why caterpillar-rich native host trees matter — fewer host plants means fewer caterpillars and fewer chickadees.
Plants in the catalog
Seed plants · 1
Chickadees glean hemlock seed and overwintering insects from the foliage and cones and shelter in the dense evergreen crown; recorded as a regular forager of conifer seed within the hemlock's northern range.
Shelter plants · 17
Mature oaks provide cavities, bark-foraging surfaces, and the abundant caterpillars that cavity-nesting songbirds rely on to raise their young; recorded as plausible for this species rather than a Shumard-specific documented tie.
Range
Resident across the northern United States and most of Canada, from Alaska and the Yukon east to the Maritimes, dipping south through the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains.