Typical Chickadee Nest and Habitat (1 Viewer)

[do re meep meep]

I found the following pics of a typical chickadee nest and surrounding forest habitat. How is a nestbox in a human infested suburban area supposed to compete with that? Makes my heart sink in my attempt to have a chickadee nest in the box that I put up...

 

[pduxon]

oh i don't know. Blue Tits over here often use nest boxes in areas where there is plenty of normal habitat.

Are chickadees known to use boxes? excuse my ignorance

 

[do re meep meep]

Are chickadees known to use boxes?

Yes, according a page on the same site http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/wildspace/life.cfm?ID=BCCH&Page=More&Lang=e
Primary nest: cavity in snag
Secondary nest: human structure (that's what those Canadian civil servants call them)

My only hope is that despite the fact that my barren backyard is everything else but similar to a chickadee's typical habitat, they nevertheless come to my feeder. Hope a chickadee mom will choose my nest box too o How can you advertise to them that I will do just about anything to keep mom, dad, and chicks well fed and happy?

Edit: Oh, and I will put up all kinds of defences against predators too!

 

[EWeaver]

Not to worry, I live next to a heavily wooded area, but my yard is not that brushy. I put up my super duper homemade chickadee box not far from a feeder and birdbath but underneath a tree and Voila!! a family moved right in, and fussy little critters they are! Interesting and very entertaining, not at all shy.

 

[KCMcgee]

We've had chickadees nesting in our garden for years. They like a box tucked right under the eaves of a garage, house, etc. In contrast, our nuthatches always nest on top of an open pole in the open.

 

[do re meep meep]

Thanks for the encouragement and advice, and a VHNY to you all!
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BTW, I did some research on the life history of Black-capped Chickadees and found out that their potential life span is 12 years, but they typically perish in their third winter at about 2.5 years.

From that somewhat disturbing fact, I derive the following statistics. A pair has thus typically 2 breeding seasons, typically only 1 brood per season. The clutch size at my locale is 6 to 7 eggs, and the two breeding seasons thus produces 13 eggs. The population is about constant which means that the survival rate from 13 eggs to 2 birds is 2/13 = 15% from first spring to third winter.

Pretty harsh selection, and that's perhaps nature's way of ensuring the survival of the species as such, but I feel sorry for the individual birds. Even the fittest ones freeze or starve to death as soon as they have passed their peak in the second year...

 

[talon_dfa]

meep meep:

No doubt... Survival in the wild is hard.
Your survival estimates are accurate.
This may be disturbing, but that is the way of the natural world.

None-the-less... Chickadees (and other species) have persisted (even in your "human-infested suburban area".

We can wish for the long lost days of the past, but humans (not chickadees) are the only species that have that luxury.

If your suburban area has all the resources to meet the needs of a pair of chickadees, they will successfully breed there.

Many areas have the resources necessary, except for standing dead trees for cavities (we tend not to keep dead trees around our houses).

Building a nest box is an easy solution to substitute for natural cavities. That is wildlife management. We do what we can.

VHNY to you too.

Forgot to add this link to US/Canada Bird Banding Lab Longevity Records:

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/homepage/longvlst.htm

 

[KnockerNorton]

If a chickadee gets a good territory and survives into its 2nd year, then it's got a good chance of surviving for a many years after that as it will have the benefit of experience of predators and food sites etc. It's the first-years that really get hammered.

Something to consider about chickadee nests is that females choose a nest site which fits with very specific criteria to do with the location and social ranking of neighbouring males and territories, as well as habitat. Actual site availability, in the guise of snags or boxes, is clearly also a factor, but you could put up 100 boxes and get a very low rate of usage if the orientation and location isn't what the female is looking for. And the bad part is that you cannot guess, and it changes somewhat form year to year. This is very different from most european tits that use boxes, which don't have the same social structure.

This site selection is all to do with sex, of course, as the female sets up home in an area that gives her chances of extra-marital affairs with higher-ranking males than her own - around 30% of chickadee nests contain chicks from more than one father.

 

[do re meep meep]

Poecile, do you have any references for further reading? TIA

 

[KnockerNorton]

Poecile, do you have any references for further reading? TIA

Have a poke around on here http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/index.html

look on the chickadee and publications pages. There are other studies that show similar stuff, but I don't have them to hand (try a google for eg nest orientation chickadee etc?)

 

[Poecileman]

BTW, I did some research on the life history of Black-capped Chickadees and found out that their potential life span is 12 years, but they typically perish in their third winter at about 2.5 years.

You know I cant imagine Chickadees having problems with food during the winter in our region, no bird can be further than a mile from a birdfeeder. And with the mild winters he have had lately their numbers should be increasing. I am in the process of building dozens of boxes for them, and a week ago put a roosting box up that they are using already. I wonder if they have a high incidence of heart disease from sunflower seed oil?

 

[kbro34]

maybe you could build a winter roost ( lots of plans available) and help the mortality rate a little.

 

[brettski]

...the female sets up home in an area that gives her chances of extra-marital affairs with higher-ranking males than her own - around 30% of chickadee nests contain chicks from more than one father.

Shameless hussies!:smoke:
Seriously...
We put up 8 Chickadee nesting boxes early this past Spring. They are all located in what would be presumed to be ideal habitat according to do re meep meep's findings and pics. Unfortunately, we only get to the site on the weekends and intermittently during the week, so we cannot spend alot of quality time monitoring them. We got zero C-adee action, but I'm not surprised considering how late we installed them. That, and the C-adees vacate during the warmer months. What we did see, tho, was the wrens taking control pretty quickly. From what I understand, not only are wrens pretty much the only other bird that can fit thru the 1.125" dia hole, but they have no issue with pecking and removing C-adee eggs and building their nest right on top. These coming months may bring some interesting results as the C-adees return for the colder weather.
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We have done nothing to clean out the nesting boxes. I gotta believe that the coming weeks would be a good time to do so...?

 

[John Morgan]

BTW, I did some research on the life history of Black-capped Chickadees and found out that their potential life span is 12 years, but they typically perish in their third winter at about 2.5 years.

From that somewhat disturbing fact, I derive the following statistics. A pair has thus typically 2 breeding seasons, typically only 1 brood per season. The clutch size at my locale is 6 to 7 eggs, and the two breeding seasons thus produces 13 eggs. The population is about constant which means that the survival rate from 13 eggs to 2 birds is 2/13 = 15% from first spring to third winter.

Pretty harsh selection, and that's perhaps nature's way of ensuring the survival of the species as such, but I feel sorry for the individual birds. Even the fittest ones freeze or starve to death as soon as they have passed their peak in the second year...

Your reading of the population dynamic is not quite correct. The life expectation of 2.5 years does not mean that most Chickadees survive to this age and then die off rapidly. Rather it is an average calculated from the life histories and thus very misleading. ||

Typically a small passerine like a Tit ( English for Chickadee ) will die in it's first year. Mortality is likely to be around 80 to 85%. If it passes this hurdle there will be a better chance of survival in the wild, usually 50%ish p.a., until it becomes very old. However, after about 5 or 6 years the number left alive will be quite small. Individual birds can live up to 10 years or more as has been shown by ringing. (English for banding ) Captive birds may go on longer.

The slightly fanciful calculation is then: 5 juveniles fledging per pair, of which four young die, plus one of the adults, balances the books - leaving just two birds at the start of the next breeding season. In practice there will be good and bad years so the numbers of passerines can fluctuate widely from year to year.

 

[do re meep meep]

Hey, this is an old thread that I have forgotten about and I see it has resurfaced.

Anyway, your numbers of 80%-85% for first year mortality appears on the high side, compared to 85% mortality over 2.5 years which is arrived at as a population average over a potential life span of 12 years. This average is distinct from population dynamics as a function of time over potential life span.

My initial posting was not meant to go beyond averages, which is already sufficient to illustrate the tragic lot of individual birds. To make the point more graphical with a comparison, if potential human life span was 100 years, 85% of such humans die before they are 20.

Edit: On re-reading, yeah my 'as soon as' language may have led you to post the response, just delete that language.

 

[KnockerNorton]

Nope, 80-85% isn't a bad figure for first-year mortality. First year chickadees can only survive if they can get established as one half of a pair in a spring territory. Otherwise, there is simply no room for them as breeding pairs evict all other chickadees at the start of the breeding season. This is when many of them die - either starve or predated as they wander in search of a vacancy. For a vacancy to arise, an established adult bird has to have died. There are only so many territories available, so excess birds cannot simply make a new territory if all the existing ones are already full. But adults have higher survival rates than juveniles, as they are more experienced and also more dominant, so vacancies do not arise very often and 80% or more of first year birds will either get killed soon after fledging, starve or get predated over the winter, or not find find a vacancy next spring.

Your human anaology is ridiculous - we do not have 8 kids at a time, every year.

 

[do re meep meep]

I disagree. Note that the number I gave, 85% mortality over 2.5 years, is a pure statistical average. This statistical average does not go into any causes for mortality, your discussion on causes for mortality is irrelevant.

My human analogy is simply prorated numbers to graphically show the high mortality rates of the birds. Again, it does not go into any causes for the mortality rate being so high. Your human analogy, whether humans have 8 kids every year or not, is again irrelevant (you could also say that it is your human analogy that is ridiculous).

Of course, one could go into causes of the high mortality rate, when mortality happens in the annual cycle, in what context within the annual cycle mortality happens, in what way mortality is replenished, etc. etc., but again, that's not what I intended to do in my initial post.

Again, my intention in the initial post is only to show the high mortality rate of 85% over 2.5 years which is about 20% of potential life span.

Edit: I succeeded in having a chickadee nest in my human infested suburban area, but only one bird fledged. I am glad at the fledge but sad at the bird's survival chances. I am nonetheless hoping for another nest next year with more fledglings.

 

[KnockerNorton]

But the mortality rates between first years and 2nd years are different, for different reasons, so looking at mortality over the first 2.5 years is misleading and biologically meaningless. The majority of your 85% mortality over 2.5 years will take place during the first year, which is why this is how people break down mortality into meaningful statistics.

In any event, there is almost no data available on annual survival/mortality for Black-capped Chickadees, so where did you get your 85% from? Much of the survival estimates for Chickadees is proxied from work on the European species in the genus (cf Ekman), which is a fair assumption seeing as all Chickadees have very similar ecologies and social structures. By the way, Ekman found first year annual mortality in Willow Tits (once considered conspecific with Black-capped Chickadee) to be about 80-85%. See Susan Smiths 1991 monograph on Black capped Chickadees for more on all that.

 

[do re meep meep]

You are still attempting to bring into the discussion something (causes of mortality) that I said nothing about, and you are trying to justify the attempt by saying that because there are different causes, the statistics has to be divided up according to the different causes to prevent the statistics from being misleading. I disagree. 'Combined' statistics can very well be very meaningful. True, a car insurance company would need a separate statistic on fatal traffic accidents, and a medical insurance company would need a separate statistic on fatal medical conditions, but the government housing department would need a 'combined' statistic for all fatalities, i.e. not differentiating between the different causes of fatalities. It really depends on the purpose whether or not a certain statistic makes sense for a certain purpose. The purpose of my initial post was to show the high mortality, not causes of mortality, etc (frankly, I'm getting tired of reiterating this).

For this purpose of showing high mortality, my 'combined' statistic from egg to third winter is very well meaningful. The reasoning behind the 'combined' statistic is also shown in my initial post.

On the magnitude of the numbers, there are indeed no reliable numbers for the chickadee. We are obviously reading the numbers differently, and it is already surprising that our readings of those unreliable numbers differ by only a percentage, not a factor. There is not much to go on to sort out such small differences with more precision.

 

[Guzano]

Well on a lighter note !!!!!!!! I have a question about winter roost !!! I just built a chickadee roost with a 1 1/8 hole !! As soon as i put it up, the chickadees jumped on it just out of curiosity !! BUT as soon as the sparrows came to the yard, they mobed it !!! Even if they could not fit in !!!

So my question is !!?? Will the chickadees attempt to enter the roost ? Even if they saw the sparrows mob it ???