Robert,
Coming from a Michigan perspective here.
As you may know, Black-capped Chickadees undergo occasional "irruptions",
once every 2-4 years. They seem to be moving from late October to
mid-November when it happens (not this year). When I've been lucky enough
to capture and band some of these birds during an irruption (in Ontario),
they've been almost entirely hatch-year birds. Their presence farther south
in Ohio at these times should not be surprising, and I remember a few years
ago that Brainard Palmer-Ball documented (banded, measured, photographed?)
some Black-capped Chickadees in northern Kentucky. Like other irruptive
species, the magnitude of their movements seems to vary quite a bit.
Carolina Chickadee, on the other hand, does not seem to move northward very
often or in any numbers. Maybe someone can refute that, but Michigan has
but a single record of Carolina Chickadee, a specimen from 1899 taken in
Wayne County in the southeastern part of the state. As they hybrid zone
moves north, maybe we can expect another Carolina Chickadee in Michigan
soon. As I emailed Bill Whan privately, I used to have to go down to Dayton
to see a Carolina Chickadee in the 1970s, but now only have to go as far as
Findlay (where there may be some hybrids too).
Allen T. Chartier
Inkster, Michigan
Email: [log in to unmask]
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mihummingbirdguy/collections/
Website: www.amazilia.net
Blog: http://mihummingbirdguy.blogspot.com/
On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 10:20 PM, Robert Evans <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Well, just below 40N.
>
> Adding to the thread regarding the black-capped vs. Carolina chickadee
> "boundary" and its progression northward:
>
> I am looking for the date, which I believe to be in January of 2003 but
> can't find it in my current records. (I have changed computers multiple
> times, and database programs once.) I had a wonderful side-by-side
> comparative view of what I called (and continue to call) a black-capped
> chickadee feeding next to a classic Carolina chickadee, at my largest
> feeder, here on the farm in Hopewell Township, Muskingum County.
>
> I do not take this sighting lightly, even though I seem to have lost track
> of the actual record. The bird in question was significantly larger than
> the Carolina right next to it when I first saw it, with a fuzzy, indistinct
> lower border to the black "bib," a slightly grayer shade of white to the
> breast, and whiter fringes to the feathers in the wings. My first
> impression was that it looked like "a chickadee on steroids." I realized
> the significance of this large chickadee at once, and I was fascinated.
>
> I watched this individual for around twenty minutes, as it came and went
> from the feeder with the standard assortment of other chickadees and other
> species. I had no trouble at all telling this singular bird from all the
> other *Parus* present. I watched, with binoculars and without, from my back
> door twenty feet away.
>
> I have never seen another here, and I do not expect to again.
>
> For what it is worth...
>
> Bob Evans
> Geologist, etc.
> Hopewell Township, Muskingum County
>
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