I will highlight acoustic communication in black-capped chickadees and our efforts to understand this system by examining vocal production and usage, examining perception of vocal signals through operant discrimination experiments, artificial neural network modeling of this operant data, as well as developmental and neurobiological studies. We have gained an incredible understanding of chickadee communication by uniting behavioural, cognitive, modeling, developmental and neurobiological approaches in order to approach our research question. Our hope in this talk is that we will convey our excitement and also to encourage other researchers to embrace this integrative approach in their own research programs.