Black-capped chickadee

The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is a small, nonmigratory, North American songbird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a passerine bird in the tit family, the Paridae. It is the state bird of Massachusetts and Maine in the United States, and the provincial bird of New Brunswick in Canada. It is well known for its ability to lower its body temperature during cold winter nights, its good spatial memory to relocate the caches where it stores food, and its boldness near humans (sometimes feeding from the hand). The black-capped chickadee is widely distributed throughout North America, ranging from the northern United States to southern Canada and all the way up to Alaska and Yukon. It has a distinct appearance characterized by its black cap and "bib" with white sides. The black-capped chickadee is a social bird and forms flocks in the winter that include other bird species. The bird is well known for its vocalizations, including its fee-bee call and its chick-a-dee-dee-dee call, from which it derives its name. In 1760, French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the black-capped chickadee in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Canada. He used the French name La mésange a tête noire de Canada and the Latin Parus Canadensis Atricapillus. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the 12th edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the black-capped chickadee. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Parus atricapillus and cited Brisson's work. The type location was subsequently restricted to the site of Quebec in Canada. The specific epithet atricapillus is Latin for 'black-haired' from ater 'black' and capillus 'hair of the head'.