Sunday, March 15, 2020

Mountain Chickadee (Poecile gambeli) - 30Mar2018

Here is an interesting tidbit from the Cornell website:

"The evergreen forests of the Western mountains periodically suffer massive outbreaks of tree-killing insects such as bark beetles and needle miners. When this happens, it’s all-you-can-eat for Mountain Chickadees. During a lodgepole needle miner outbreak in Arizona, one chickadee was found with 275 of the tiny caterpillars in its stomach at one time."

Here is one photographed in the mountains west of Colorado Springs in Mueller State Park.




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