Male Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) sing for several minutes prior to dawn during the breeding season. In northeastern Colorado, dawn singing was associated with male-female interactions rather than male-male interactions; males did not approach one another during the chorus. Males sang until female arrival, at which point they attempted copulation. During copulation attempts, males always uttered strings of variable sees and nearly always attached gargles to these strings. All gargles terminated in an acoustically similar, low-pitched, buzzy syllable.