I spent some time during the recent holiday weekend taking care of the feeders in my yard. It is an annual Thanksgiving break ritual of cleaning, moving, changing and improving the feeder set-ups around my yard.

My chores were made much more engaging due to the constant companionship of my resident Carolina Chickadees. They were a continuous distraction as they hurriedly rushed back and forth between feeders, chattering nonstop and scolding me when I removed their favorite feeder for cleaning.

Chickadees are probably one of the main reasons I enjoy the hobby so much. Their energetic and saucy attitudes always brighten up even the dreariest day!

At this time of the year, chickadees are extra busy caching seeds for the winter by the hundreds. In a behavior called “scatter-hoarding”, each seed they collect is individually hidden in a unique location. Common storage sites include under tree bark, dead leaves, knotholes, and even behind house siding and underneath shingles.

The amazing thing is that they can accurately remember the location of each seed they hoard! Not only that, they also remember the quality of seed they initially stored, and make more of an effort to retrieve high quality seeds than inferior ones.

How do they do it?

Scientists have found that the hippocampus region of the brain, the area associated with this type of spatial memory, is proportionately larger in chickadees than in other birds that do not cache food. Not only is it generally larger, it actually increases in size in the autumn and shrinks back to its original size each spring!

It’s as if the chickadee adds more hard drive space to its brain’s computer as needed and then efficiently wipes it clean when it’s not.

It’s a very cool bird with a really cool adaptation to help it survive the winter and I am glad to have them around my yard to make my world a lot brighter…and my work just a little bit more enjoyable.