The Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) is a small passerine bird in the tit family Paridae.
The Carolina chickadee is often placed in the genus Parus with most other tits, but mtDNAcytochrome bsequence data and morphology suggest that separating Poecile more adequately expresses these birds’ relationships (Gill et al., 2005). The American Ornithologists’ Union has been treating Poecile as distinct genus since 1998.[2] Although it and the black-capped chickadee most likely diverged about 2.5 million years ago, the birds still hybridize in the areas where their ranges overlap.[3]
