Spatial memory of food-storing tits (Parus ater and P. atricapillus): Comparison of storing and nonstoring tasks.

We compared food-storing tits' memory for the locations of items they had stored and of food they had only seen. Experiment 1 showed that after 1.5–2 hrs black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus) and coal tits (P. ater) are better at discriminating between sites where they have stored a seed and ones simply visited than at discriminating between sites where they have seen a seed behind a window and ones visited. In Experiment 2, we compared chickadees' accuracy of return after 1.5 hrs to either seeds behind windows or seeds without windows in front of them. The probability of returning to seeds behind windows was lower than that of returning to stored seeds, but stored seeds and seeds without windows were visited with equal probability. In Experiment 3, neither stored seeds nor seeds without windows were forgotten after 26 hrs. The results are consistent with suggestions that memory for stored food is subserved by the same memory system as that for encountered food. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)