FLUFFED BY WIND, a chickadee perches in northern Dickinson County. The diminutive birds have a sophisticated system of communication and even regional dialects. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)

When I feed the birds — and, to be honest, the deer — the first to herald my arrival at the garden tractor shed each day are black-capped chickadees.

They wait, not patiently, as the rolling door rattles up. I’ve learned over the years to put out seeds for them at the start, because otherwise they will boldly venture in, then decide the window at the other end of the shed is a better escape than the big, obvious square of daylight by which they entered.

It leaves me trying to cajole chickadees, often now addled by battering themselves against a window, out of the shed, then feeling a little silly that I expect them to understand what I’m saying.

But I never begrudge them the extra trouble. Chickadees are a constant bright presence even in the depths of winter. Their seemingly cheerful chatter draws a smile, no matter how cold.

And, as it turns out, while they might not speak English, they are thought to have a much higher level of communication skills than previously credited.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website, allaboutbirds.org, “Chickadee calls are complex and language-like, communicating information on identity and recognition of other flocks as well as predator alarms and contact calls. The more dee notes in a chickadee-dee-dee call, the higher the threat level.”

I can attest to that — as I’ve become recognized and trusted, I draw very few dees. Instead, as I dish out the seeds the chickadees change to a few twittering notes that seem either excited by the food or perhaps letting others know what’s available.

All About Birds lists a host of other calls: a melodic “fee-bee” that doesn’t have the raspy edge of Eastern phoebes and can be heard right now, becoming more frequent as winter progresses; a “gargling call, often given aggressively when a lower-ranking bird gets close to a higher-ranking one”; and a high-pitched “see” as an alarm that will trigger chickadees to freeze in position — useful if a predator such as a sharp-shinned hawk is spotted — until they hear a “chickadee-dee” call that signals the danger has passed.

In her 2016 bestselling book “The Genius of Birds” Jennifer Ackerman states that scientists credit chickadees with having “one of the most sophisticated and exacting systems of communication of any land animal.”

But why would chickadees need such a diverse vocabulary of sounds? Their social nature is likely the main reason, according to a Nov. 18, 2015, article on the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences website, https://ifas.ufl.edu/.

In “Small bird, big mouth: the surprisingly complex language of the Carolina Chickadee,” then-masters student Harrison Jones wrote about research done by Dr. Todd Freeberg, a scientist at the University of Tennessee.

Freeberg studied Carolina chickadees, which are the similar-looking southern and eastern counterpart to the black-capped. According to Jones’ article, Freeberg found the birds could communicate different messages by repeating or adding certain notes to their calls. Find a good food source? Put more D notes at the end — which also works to rally others if a mob is needed to drive off a threat, Freeberg found.

Is a hawk nearby? Add A notes, especially at the beginning of the call. C notes figured into the mix as well.

The result, Jones wrote of Freeberg’s findings, is their “calls are an open-ended system. In most songbirds, the number of calls produced are finite — given enough time, one could find and record all of the call types produced by a given species. But because the chick-a-dee call notes can be combined and repeated in myriad ways to produce different meanings, an attempt to record all of the chickadee’s calls would constantly yield new combinations of note types, thus making it impossible to record all of their calls. The same is true of humans of course. We can combine words in endless ways to make sentences, generating an infinite number of possible sentences.”

Both his article and All About Birds also noted chickadees can have regional dialects — black-capped chickadees sing slightly differently in the Pacific Northwest, while Freeberg found that Carolina chickadees in Indiana used certain notes less frequently than a flock studied in Tennessee.

This places these tiny birds in some select company — animals such as sperm whales and orcas, too, have shown regional variations in the patterns of clicks they use to communicate, according to online articles.

And, of course, humans — yet another area where, like toolmaking and problem-solving, we once thought ourselves unique.

All About Birds also shares about black-capped chickadees: They will hide food and can remember thousands of hiding places. Plus — and this seems like quite the skill — “every autumn black-capped chickadees allow brain neurons containing old information to die, replacing them with new neurons so they can adapt to changes in their social flocks and environment even with their tiny brains.”

So one of the most common birds of the Northwoods isn’t so common after all. Take a moment next time to appreciate just what is wrapped up in that tiny, fluffy chickadee body and, especially, head.

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 85240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.