International Journal of Comparative Psychology

Black-capped ( Poecile atricapillus ) and mountain chickadees ( Poecile gambeli ) have been used as amodel to examine cognitive functions including perception, episodic-like memory, and spatiallearning and orientation. Recently, these species have been used in two studies to examine therelationship between learning and novel environment exploration and novel environment explorationand dominance. In the current study we explored whether these two species show consistency inbehavior over time. In same species/same sex groups, male and female black-capped and mountainchickadees were released into a room and then captured by an experimenter with the procedurerepeated one week later. Males, but not females in both species show consistency in capture orderover both sessions. We discuss implications of this finding in the context of possible sampling biases.