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The Daily Bucket - Black-capped or Chestnut-backed? [1]

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Date: 2024-06-08  

June 6, 2024

San Juan County, Washington

This is fledgling season everywhere these days, so there’s nothing unusual in my sighting yesterday in that regard. Maybe not at all. But there’s a possibility the fledgling/parent pair I saw might have been Black-capped chickadees, and that would be quite an event. I live in the San Juan islands, where we have abundant Chestnut-backed chickadees but Black-cappeds are rare. Black-capped chickadees are common on the mainland but they don’t like to fly over much water. Occasionally one will get blown over by high wind but not regularly, based on the few reports a year at eBird. There have only been a couple of reports ever of two at once. Besides this year, the only other time I personally have ever seen a Black-capped chickadee here in the islands was eight and a half years ago, after a winter windstorm.

I definitively saw two adult Black-cappeds in my backyard recently, on May 20 and 27, with otherwise just one regular visitor at a time at the seed feeder from the second week of May on.

May 20, 2024 . View of feeder through dirty window

Chickadees fledge two weeks after hatching so the baby I saw yesterday could be either kind.

Problem for ID is my crappy photos. I heard the fledgling begging in a tree and just could not get any decent pictures of the parent. Here’s what I have, besides the nice photo of the fledgling in the title image.

Begging fledgling and parent’s butt

Side view of parent , fledgling behind

Fledgling in front, parent flying off

An extremely brief video (the parent flew off into a tall tree, and that was that):

.

Here’s a screenshot from the 5 second video:

Fledgling below, parent above.

For ID reference, here are comparisons of the two kinds of chickadees:

Adult stage:

From Cornell Ornithology

Fledgling stage:

Black-capped on left, Chestnut-backed on right. Photos from Macaulay Library at Birds of the World

Any thoughts from the group about whether this might have been a Blackcapped fledgling/family? And if it was, might Blackcaps be able to establish a breeding population out here in the islands?



🌸



Warm, with temps in the upper 60s in the PNW islands today. Sunny and calm.

The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns. We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

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