The Science Life Animals

Winter work shows it really pays to be a smart mountain chickadee

A multidecade study of wild chickadees shows how smart they need to be to survive

A gray, black and white chickadee perches on a snowy branch. It has a blue tag on one leg and a bigger red one on the other.

Researchers have tagged this wild mountain chickadee as part of a long-term cognition study of the species in the Sierra Nevada range.

Vladimir Pravosudov

By Elizabeth Pennisi

A mountain chickadee waking up in the Sierra Nevada range on a snowy morning has no time to dawdle.

Weighing about as much as a pencil, it needs to find stashed pine nuts within minutes or succumb to the howling winds and subzero temperatures.