A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Poecile carolinensis
Thanks for the help with this one! I'll try to get multiple shots next time.
Based on that I think it can be safely recorded as a Carolina Chickadee then. If you want to suggest it I will second it.
You are correct. On ebird it shows last report of a Black-capped was 2011. Mostly it's Carolina recently. I knew it had to be that but that's why I suggested both. I should have checked ebird first.
My book shows a similar range for both species, but many lists can be meaningless without much more data. Some maps will show a whole country as having a species on their list while there has actually only been a single record in 100 years, while others break the country into 1km squares and record the number in each square in each month! The consensus among many experts is that it is often impossible to separate them with any degree of accuracy without analysing the song or a DNA sample, neither of which we have. I would suggest putting Poecile sp. as the scientific name and listing the two possibilities in the Notes.
According to this range map http://www.sibleyguides.com/bird-info/bl... the location given should only see the Carolina Chickadee, except in exceptional circumstances.
I think this is a Carolina Chickadee as it has a small, neat bib, whereas the Black-capped has a much deeper bib with a broken up lower edge. Also the cap is raised up more from behind the eye. Both have double wing bars but the Black-capped are more obvious.
Yea, this is a terrible shot to try to distinguish the two- you can't really get a good enough view of the wing to tell if it has that white stripe or not. I would lean toward the black-capped chickadee if only because this picture was taken so far north.
It also looks really close to a Carolina Chickadee which has very subtle differences which is hard to tell in the photo at only one angle
Spotted on Apr 15, 2015
Submitted on Apr 15, 2015
