Boreal Chickadee — Wings of NH

What you notice first

A chickadee that sounds congested — a slow, wheezy, nasal "tsick-a-day-day" with the energy drained out of it — coming from high in a spruce.

Voice

The drawling, husky "chick-a-day-day," much slower and burrier than a Black-capped; various thin "seet" notes. Boreal Chickadees rarely give a clear whistled song.

Where & when

Cool, damp spruce-fir — the Kilkenny, the Connecticut Lakes, the higher slopes off the Kancamagus, the fringes of Pondicherry and Umbagog. Present all year; a rare irruption year pushes a few birds south and downslope in fall.

Why it's hard

Range edge and habitat fidelity. New Hampshire sits at the southern margin of a mostly Canadian range, the birds stay tight to mature wet conifer forest, they forage high and quietly, and they don't come to feeders the way their Black-capped cousins do.

The brown-capped chickadee of the deep spruce woods. Where a Black-capped has a crisp black cap and clean grey back, a Boreal has a warm brown cap, brown flanks, a greyer face, and that unmistakable adenoidal voice.

They cache food more heavily than Black-capped Chickadees and lean harder on conifer seed and dormant insects tucked in bark and needle clusters to get through a North Country winter. Pairs hold territory year-round in the same stand.

For most New Hampshire birders this is a deliberate trip: drive north, get into mature wet spruce-fir, and work the tops of the trees by ear. A mixed foraging flock — kinglets, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees — is worth stopping for, because the odd wheezy note in it is the bird you came for.