#chickadees

[celesse]

Spreading good cheer 🐰🐦💕

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Gazing from afar activates place cells in chickadees

The results help explain how the hippocampus can recall information about a place without an animal physically revisiting it.

This new study out on chickadees is a great example of how the hippocampus is important to both memory and observation. In this case, black-capped chickadees were shown to have activity in that part of the brain both before gazing out on a wide area, and during their visual scan of the land.

This means that they are anticipating finding something interesting--perhaps a cache of food--before they even start actively looking. It also shows how they can orient themselves with a mental map fueled by their memory. And it demonstrates how the same cells in the hippocampus can have multiple roles, adding to our understanding of the complexity of the vertebrate brain.

None of this should surprise avid birders and other observers; we've seen birds and other animals return to caches of food. But it's another piece of the puzzle of how the brain processes the retention and retrieval of memory, and when these skills may have first evolved in animals millions of years ago.

[spinus-pinus]

Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli

2/19/2024 Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

[antiqueanimals]

Don Balke (b. 1933), Turtle, 1986, gouache on board.

Invaluable

[weepingwidar]

Mike Piggott (American, 1963) - Chickadees on an Aspen (2024)

[nocturnal-stims]

🪶 KatieKreen on IG

[ostdrossel]

Another little update on the pump Chickies. I put them in this old nestbox I had so that they would not be super exposed to the elements and predators, and put that in a bucket that I mounted on the pump, so the parents would find them. This has worked out great (they are not scared around me, thankfully, and when I put them in the box I showed the parent the inside so they knew where the babies are, and miraculously this has worked), even though I am putting the box in the sunroom over night to keep them safe from the curious raccoon. I cannot change the location of the box because I don't want to risk the parents abandoning them, so this will have to do. Hopefully they are soon big enough to fledge.

[susanoos-wife]

A wonderful thing about being alive is that at any point, there's a possibility that you could go outside and see a chickadee.