Talented is an adjective not typically used to describe a bird. But, in my book, the little black-capped chickadee has this gift and much more.

For instance, black-capped chickadees have been observed stashing tiny morsels of food in hundreds, if not thousands of locations, like tree bark crevices, and during the lean winter months, retrieving almost all of them.

“If one watches chickadees at a feeder, they will quickly notice that they come in, grab a seed, and then fly off,” explained Chris Elphick, professor in UCONN’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Part of the reason for this is that the chickadees are taking the seeds off and storing them for later. For this storage strategy to work, though, they must remember all the locations where seeds are hidden away, and amazingly the chickadees do remember thousands of locations.”

“By studying memory in chickadees, we’ve also learned a lot about how memory works and how it varies compared to other kinds of birds, which has implications for our understanding of brain function in humans,” Elphick added.

These popular birds are also sentinels, sending alarm calls through the forest whenever they spot predators like owls, sharp-shinned hawks, or a fox prowling in their territory. How do chickadees warn other animals?

They sound the alarm by singing “Chick-a-dee, dee, dee,” a song they are named after, which sets off a chain reaction.

“The alarm call ricochets from chickadees to nuthatches to titmice to jays, and soon an angry horde of songbirds arrives to mob the intruder,” according to allaboutbirds.org.

Erick Greene, a University of Montana researcher, decoded the alarm calls in 2005. He said the threat level of the alarm is determined by the number of dee’s in the call, and up to 50 different species of wildlife understand the alarm and head for cover.

My grandfather is the one who first introduced me to these wonderful birds. As a young boy, I remember visiting my grandparents and once watching my grandfather sit in his backyard, wrapped in a blanket, overlooking the Magothy River in Severna Park, Md., and have chickadees fly in and take sunflower seeds out of his hand.

It was a magical moment for me to see Grandpa, as we affectionately called him, attract birds the way he did, and it is probably the singular reason why I later became an avid backyard birder, and maybe a nature writer.

Sadly, I did not get to know my grandfather very well. He passed several years later, but this kind, gifted person, whom I later learned was G. Warfield Hobbs, a distinguished editor of The Baltimore Sun newspaper, taught me to appreciate the beauty of birds.

Today, thanks to him, chickadees remain one of my favorite backyard birds.

Bill Hobbs lives in Stonington. He can be reached for comments at whobbs246@gmail.com.