Sapsucker Woods Bird Compass
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, USA · North America · temperate_forest
About this place
Explore avian retinal cryptochrome-4 quantum magnetoreception and Parus/Poecile winter hippocampal neurogenesis.
For kids: Meet tiny chickadees with super-memory brains for thousands of hidden seeds and warblers that see Earth's compass!
Sapsucker Woods Bird Compass · 360° Habitat Camp
What to look for
- Chickadee bark-pantry birches — Poecile atricapillus hippocampal cache map. Centre the birch-hemlock trunks used for scatter-hoarding thousands of seeds
- Sapsucker maple soda-fountain — Sphyrapicus varius keystone sap wells. Locate hardwood trunks drilled with grid-like phloem sap wells
- Atlantic Flyway quantum night sky — Cryptochrome-4 radical-pair compass. Scan the Atlantic Flyway airspace navigated via retinal radical-pair physics
Source: Xu et al. (2021), Nature; Barnea & Nottebohm (1994), PNAS — Retinal cryptochrome-4 magnetoreception & seasonal hippocampal neurogenesis.
Ask together: If you hid a hundred snacks around your house without writing a list, how many could you find a month later—compared to a chickadee's thousands?
Field quiz
Kids' question: How does a tiny black-capped chickadee remember thousands of secret winter seed hiding spots?
- Its brain grows fresh new memory cells every autumn!
- It draws tiny maps on maple leaves
- Squirrels remind it every morning
Answer
Its brain grows fresh new memory cells every autumn!
Adults' question: Which light-activated retinal protein enables night-migrating songbirds to sense Earth's geomagnetic inclination?
- Cryptochrome-4 (CRY4) forming magnetically sensitive flavin–tryptophan radical pairs
- Haemoglobin iron crystals spinning inside tail feathers
- Melanin granules vibrating inside the ear canal
- Keratin prisms along the lower mandible
Answer
Cryptochrome-4 (CRY4) forming magnetically sensitive flavin–tryptophan radical pairs
360° photo: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0
See it live: Live check: Cornell Lab FeederWatch Cam
- By day
- Black-capped chickadees, northern cardinals, blue jays, & downy woodpeckers Templeton et al. (2005, Science) showed the number of 'dee' syllables in chickadee mobbing calls encodes exact predator size and agility!
- By night
- Southern flying squirrels gliding in & eastern screech-owls Nocturnal Glaucomys volans glide on wrist-to-ankle patagia membranes and fluoresce bubblegum-pink under ultraviolet light.
Other language: Русский