Pam and friend

All three photos posted today were taken yesterday, 19 October 2017, when I joined birding friends for a walk in South Glenmore Park. The setting is beautiful, but usually the birds are out in the middle of the Glenmore Reservoir or near the far side. The main reasons I go for a walk there is just to enjoy the views over the water and to catch up with friends. If I'm lucky, I might come home with a couple of bird photos.

Not the best lighting, but I thought this little Chickadee's pose was quite cute. It looks like it is checking, before flying off, that there is not a better seed in friend Pam's hand. They can be picky eaters. These birds are just 24 hours away from death, and need to collect enough fat in order to survive. Such busy little birds.

"The Black-capped Chickadee is notable for its capacity 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 (they can feed from the hand)." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-capped_Chickadee

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black-capped_chickadee/id

"The chickadee's unerring spatial memory is remarkable enough, says Colin Saldanha, assistant professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and an anatomist who has studied songbirds for six years.

But it is what happens inside the tiny songbird's brain that Saldanha finds amazing. In the fall, as the chickadee is gathering and storing seeds, Saldanha says, its hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for spatial organization and memory in many vertebrates, expands in volume by approximately 30 percent by adding new nerve cells. In songbirds, the hippocampus is located on the dorsal surface of the forebrain right beneath the skull. In mammals, the hippocampus is located beneath the cortex.

In the spring, when its feats of memory are needed less, the chickadee's hippocampus shrinks back to its normal size, Saldanha says." From article on ScienceDaily.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030912072156.htm