The black-capped chickadee’s biological adaptation to cache food includes writing large amounts of data to memory. Using a complex system of spacial memory, the bird maps stored locations for recall. Each cache is unique and used only once.

Poecile atricapillus: black cap, black bib, white cheeks is an exploration of this system.

Walking around my neighborhood during the winter of 2019, I recorded probable chickadee-cached food sites by geographic coordinates. Points of interest and surrounding landmarks were noted as secondary datasets. Since chickadees expand their brains and ‘delete’ old memories to retain more recent site data, this book marks hypothetical evidence of a whimsical chickadee during a specific place in time and region.

Foundation artwork by local mixed media artist, Eileen Harwood. Eileen’s line work and color palette creates a harmonious backstory for the overlay maps.