What bird says cheeseburger?

A whistled cheese-bur-ger, one high note followed by two lower ones, is most often a Mountain Chickadee in the mountains of the West, or a Black-capped Chickadee giving its spring whistle across the northern states. Audubon also hangs the word on the Carolina Wren, whose three-part phrase is better known as teakettle. The quick test: a chickadee gives one short whistle, while the wren says its phrase three times in a row.

Listen: the likeliest bird

Of the three birds that get the credit, the Mountain Chickadee has the strongest claim in print. Wikipedia's account of the species says flatly that its song sounds like a whistled cheeseburger, and describes it as a falling whistle of three or four notes, written fee-bee-bay or fee-bee-fee-bee.

Audubon Magazine reaches the same bird from the other side. In a 2017 essay on mnemonics, Peter Cashwell turns a long high note followed by two shorter, lower ones into cheeseburger, then adds that western birders write those three notes as fee bee bee and file them under Mountain Chickadee. His point is that the burger is far easier to remember.

This is a bird of the western mountains, from the southern Yukon down through the Rocky Mountain states and into California, and it lives across a wide range of elevations there. Its everyday call is a throaty chick-a-dee-dee-dee. If you can see the singer, look for a white stripe cutting through the black cap above the eye. No other North American chickadee has one.

Other birds that say cheeseburger

Across the northern half of the country, the whistler is often the Black-capped Chickadee. Its song is a two-note fee-bee, sung mostly by males, and it sounds nothing like the buzzy chick-a-dee-dee-dee call that the same bird gives. A 2020 column in the Sandpoint Reader, a paper in northern Idaho, notes that this whistle has sometimes been called cheeseburger, and more fittingly in the writer's view, hey, sweetie. The column places it in late winter and spring, when males use it to court a mate and stake out territory.

Black-capped Chickadees stay put all year. In the United States they range from northern California, northern Nevada and New Mexico east through the Midwest to New Jersey, in conifer and broadleaf woods, willow thickets, city parks and suburbs.

The Carolina Wren is the third suspect, and Audubon is the one that names it. The photo caption on Cashwell's essay offers cheeseburger, tea kettle and pidaro as three ways to hear the same wren. Most American field guides, Audubon's and National Geographic's among them, write the song as tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle, while David Sibley spells it pidaro pidaro pidaro. Cashwell sides with the words: a real word you already know is much easier to recall than syllables that mean nothing, so cheeseburger beats pidaro every time.

How to tell which one you heard

• Count the repeats. Field guides write the Carolina Wren's song as the same phrase three times running. Both chickadees give a single short whistle.
• Count the notes. Two clear notes, high then lower, point to the Black-capped Chickadee. Three or four notes stepping down point to the Mountain Chickadee.
• Check where you are. In the western mountains, the Mountain Chickadee is the first bird to consider. Across the northern states, think Black-capped.
• Look at the cap. A white eyebrow through the black cap means Mountain Chickadee. A solid black cap and bib with white cheeks means Black-capped.
• Listen between whistles. Both chickadees also give a chick-a-dee-dee-dee call, throaty in the Mountain Chickadee and buzzy in the Black-capped. If that call comes from the same tree, you are probably hearing a chickadee.

If the whistling goes on and you still cannot decide, hold up your phone and let Warble listen for a minute. It names the singer by sound alone.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.