What Do Chickadees Eat?

Video Transcript

"Black capped chickadees. That's one of my favorite birds. It's the state bird here in Massachusetts and certainly appealing little things. Again, they do insects primarily in the summer, but even in the winter you'll see them in little flocks foraging high in the trees where they're looking for tiny little overwintering insects that may be in the form of either larvae or in some cases even insect eggs or the pupal stages of certain small insects. Very, very tiny things. I mean, chickadees aren't very big. They have a small, little, pointy bill. So, that that's the kind of thing that they are inclined to feed on sort of as a first line. But then, because they so frequently come to bird feeders, they love sunflower seeds and other small seeds. And you'll see them take a sunflower seed. They'll put it between his feet and they'll hammer on it to crack the shell open and then take the heart out. Unlike sparrows and finches and things that have conical bills that are very good for, they can just take the whole, ingest the whole seed, crack it open, deal with it and then they shuck the shells aside and just take the heart. Chickadees have to manually, so to speak, hold the seed and peck it open and then they take the heart out. So, they will take certain kinds of seeds and are regular visitors to bird feeders, where that's what they prefer to eat. They also like beef suet, you know, if you put beef suet out, which is a common offering for feeder birds in the winter. Chickadees will take that as well. But certainly during the warmer weather, they're looking for insects of one sort or another and not particularly eating seeds at that time of the year."