The Mountain Chickadee lives up to its name: Found in mountainous regions of the western US, it has been described as “active and acrobatic” and “a busy presence.” This charismatic little bird doesn’t migrate, and the sunflower seeds you stock in feeders may help them survive the winter. If you see one snatch and fly off with a seed, there’s a good chance it’s storing the seed for later.
Cached food is only useful if the bird can remember its location, so it makes sense that scatter hoarding Mountain Chickadees have excellent spatial memory. Now researchers have shown that individuals with better spatial memory live longer.
By outfitting birds with transponder tags and using high tech feeders, researchers identified individual Mountain Chickadees that learned which feeder provided food. Individuals with the best spatial cognition lived on average two years longer than those with the worst.
Other recently published work looked at whether older memories inhibit a bird’s ability to acquire new ones, whether birds’ social groups influence spatial learning, and the genetic basis for spatial cognition in chickadees.