Mexican Chickadee Life History

Habitat

Mexican Chickadees occur in mountain forests and woodlands, ranging from 1,900–2,900 meters (6,200–9,500 feet) in the main part of their range. In Mexico, they inhabit deciduous, coniferous, and mixed habitats, including pine-oak woodlands, pine-alder forests, oak woodlands, pine forests, and fir forests. In their very limited U.S. range, these chickadees are tightly associated with ponderosa pine forests and spruce-Douglas fir forests.

Food

Mexican Chickadees feed on small caterpillars and other insects. They forage from about 2 meters (7 feet) above the ground to the tops of trees, covering both the interior and edges by hopping on branches and twigs. This species mainly picks insects from leaves and twigs, and like other chickadees, it also hangs upside down to capture prey.

Nesting

Nest Placement

Placed in natural cavity or artificial nest box at heights that can range from ground level to high in trees. Four natural nests in the Chiricahua Mountains were 11–18 meters (36–59 feet) high in ponderosa pines, but nests in Mexico include several natural cavities less than 1 meter (3 feet) from the ground.

Nest Description

A cup of dry fibrous material lined with moss, fur, and soft catkins.

Nesting Facts

Behavior

Mexican Chickadees are social birds during the nonbreeding season, occurring in large mixed-species flocks. These consist of small songbirds such as vireos, tanagers, warblers, Bushtits, wrens, creepers, nuthatches, and kinglets. Mexican Chickadees are present in almost all mixed-species flocks, calling frequently and issuing alarm calls if they spot a hawk or owl.

Conservation

Partners in Flight estimates Mexican Chickadee’s global population size at 2,000,000 breeding individuals and rates the species a 14 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a Yellow Watch List species of high conservation concern.

Credits

Dunne, P. (2006). Pete Dunne's essential field guide companion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, USA.

Ficken, M. S. and J. Nocedal (2020). Mexican Chickadee (Poecile sclateri), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, P. R. Stettenheim, and F. B. Gill, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.mexchi.01

Harrap, S., and D. Quinn (1995). Chickadees, Tits, Nuthatches and Treecreepers. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Partners in Flight (2023). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2023.

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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