The brown-headed tit is a small bird that looks like a titmouse. Male — black birds with dark brown heads. Adult males are shiny black, while juveniles are dull black. Females are much smaller and solid brown with a whitish throat and light streaks on the underside.
Species origin and description
Photo: Brown-headed tit
The brown-headed tit is also called the little tit, found mainly in the forests of Asia and Europe. This view was first described by Swiss naturalist Thomas Kornad von Baldenstein. Previously, brown-headed chickadees were considered as a genus of chickadees (Poecile), belonging to a larger genus of tits (Parus).
Video: Brown-headed tit
The Latin name for this species is Parus montanus throughout the world. Recently, however, scientists, based on genetic analysis, found that the bird is only distantly related to the rest of the chickadees. Therefore, American ornithologists propose to return the former name of the bird, which in Latin sounds like Poecile montanus. The species of brown-headed tit is one of the most common among the entire genus, it is only slightly inferior to the great tit.
Interesting fact: In the wild, such a bird lives from 2 to 3 years. According to ornithologists, very rarely this species of bird can live up to 9 years.
On the ground, the typical gait of the brown-headed tit is described as a quick step — between walking and jumping. Birds move hastily during feeding, often changing direction, sometimes in a single hop. Birds also exhibit “thumping” or rapid paw vibrations while feeding, which can help flush out prey and give the impression of erratic gait.
Appearance and Features
Photo: What the brown-headed tit looks like
This species of bird has an indescribable greyish-brown plumage. The large head is on a short neck. The bird is small in size, but of a large build. The upper part of the head, like the back, has black plumage. This color from the back of the head extends far to the front of the back. The rest of the back, wings, shoulders, lumbar region and tail are colored brownish gray. The brown-headed tit has white cheeks.
The sides of the neck are also light, but have a hint of ocher. There is a distinct black spot on the front of the throat. The lower part of the brown-headed tit has a characteristic white-gray plumage with an admixture of ocher on the sides and in the region of the lower tail. The beak characteristic of these birds is brown. The paws of the bird are dark gray.
The brown-headed tit is easily confused with the black-headed tit. Its distinguishing feature is a black cap, which is dull rather than shiny, and a large patch of black with a gray stripe around the feathers. It is also easily distinguished from the black-headed chickadee by its gait.
Interesting fact: An important distinguishing feature of a bird is vocalization. Unlike the black-headed tit, the brown-headed tit has a meager repertoire. This bird has only 3 types of singing.
Where does the brown-headed tit live?
Photo: Brown-headed tit bird
A distinctive feature of brown-headed chickadees is their habitat preference. This bird species lives in coniferous forests. In this regard, they can often be found in northern latitudes. For their habitat, birds choose dense forests, overgrown river banks and other places remote from people. Despite this, they are very interested in people and prefer to enjoy leftover human food.
The females sleep in the nest and seem to alternate between periods of sleep and vigilance, often turning their eggs over during periods of vigilance. During the last days of nesting, the female cannot return to the nest to sleep. Away from the nest, the birds apparently spend the night in a dense shelter low above the ground. They live in places with dense shrubs, green shrubs and horsetails at ground level.
Male brown-headed chickadees defend territories from other males during the breeding season. Habitat type and quality, as well as the phase of the breeding cycle, are likely important determinants of territory size. Territory boundaries with neighbors appear to be relatively static during the breeding season, but fluctuations in the breeding cycle can affect how much territory or habitat a male will use.
Now you know where the brown-headed tit is found. Let's see what this bird eats.
What does the brown-headed tit eat?
Photo: Brown-headed tit
In winter The brown-headed titmouse's diet consists of plant foods such as juniper seeds, spruce, and pine. One-fourth of the diet consists of animal food in the form of sleeping insects, which the brown-headed tit actively extracts from hiding places in trees and needles.
During the summer season, the diet consists of half plant food in the form of fruits and berries, and half animal food such as larvae and insects. Young birds feed mainly on spiders, sawfly larvae, as well as small caterpillars of future butterflies. Later, they add plant foods to their diet.
Adults have a more varied diet, and animal foods include:
- butterflies in all stages of development;
- small spiders;
- small beetles, mainly weevils;
- hymenoptera, such as wasps and bees;
- dipterous insects – flies, midges, mosquitoes;
- winged insects;
- grasshoppers;
- earthworms;
- snails;
- mites.
Plant foods include:
- cereals such as oats and corn;
- seeds, fruits of plants such as horse sorrel, burdock, knapweed, etc.;
- seeds, fruits of trees, such as birch and alder;
- berries of shrubs, trees, such as blueberries, mountain ash, cranberries, cranberries.
Brown-headed chickadees feed on medium and the lower balls of the forest, and in rare cases they fall to the ground. These birds like to hang upside down on thin sticks, in this state they can often be found in the forest or other habitats.
Character and lifestyle features
Photo: Brown tit in Russia
Brown-headed nuts — very thrifty birds. Birds begin to store food for the winter in summer and autumn. Sometimes they hide the food they find even in winter. Juveniles gather stocks in July. The storage locations for these stocks can be very different. Most often, they hide food in tree trunks, bushes and stumps. To prevent anyone from finding it, brown-headed chickadees cover their food with pieces of bark. In just one day, this little bird can collect up to 2,000 of these food caches.
Brown-headed chickadees sometimes forget places where food is hidden, and then accidentally find it. Some stocks are eaten immediately after they are found, and some are hidden again. Thanks to these actions, food is distributed evenly throughout the territory. Along with brown-headed chickadees, other birds also use these stocks.
During the breeding season, males tend to be intolerant of other male intrusions and will chase them out of their territories. Females generally do not chase other females, but one paired female would constantly huddle when another female was near her and her mate for a short time. Females sometimes accompany their partners during territorial battles, and often give an excited call. Other times they are tolerant of other females.
In some cases, polygamy occurs in brown-headed chickadees. During courtship and mating season, the couple spend most of the day foraging within 10m of each other, often less than 1m apart.
Social Structure and Reproduction reproduction
Photo: Brown-headed tit
The breeding season for brown-headed chickadees is from April to May. Birds ready to fly are born in July. These birds find their mate in their first year of life, mainly during winter, and live together until one of the partners dies. During courtship, you may see the male running after the female while both sexes make trembling movements with their wings as well as bending the body. Before mating, the male presents food to the female while singing his murmuring song.
These birds nest mainly in one area, which is protected all year round. Brown-headed chickadees nest at heights up to 3 meters and build in dead tree trunks or tree stumps such as aspen, birch or larch. The bird itself makes a recess or uses the finished one, which is left over from another bird. Sometimes, brown-headed chickadees use hollow squirrels.
Interesting fact: The female equips and equips the nest. This is a long process that lasts from 4 days to 2 weeks. If bad conditions precede it, the nest building process is delayed up to 24-25 days.
The egg hatching process takes approximately 2 weeks. While the female prepares the eggs for hatching, the male defends her territory near the nest and also takes care of the food. In rare cases, the female herself goes in search of food. Chickens do not appear at the same time, but one at a time. This process takes 2-3 days. Newborn birds are characterized by a sparse brownish-gray down that covers small areas of the head and back. Chicks are also distinguished by a yellow-brown or yellow tint of the beak.
Feeding is done by both parents, who can bring food up to 300 times a day. At night, as well as in cold weather, the female heats the cubs with her body and does not leave for a minute. Within 17-20 days after hatching, the chicks can fly, but still do not know how to get their own food, so their life is still completely dependent on their parents.
From mid-July, strong chicks, along with their parents, join other birds, forming flocks. In this composition, they roam from place to place until late winter. In winter, flocks exhibit hierarchical power, in which males dominate females, and old birds dominate young ones. This species of birds most often lives in the same area, in rare cases changing location within a radius of no more than 5 km.
Natural enemies of the brown tit
Photo: Brown-headed chickadee
Predators of adult brown-headed chickadees are largely unknown, although evidence has been found of adult deaths in nests. Many predators of eggs and juveniles have been recorded. Rat snakes are one of the most common predators of brown-headed chickadees. Video cameras at nests in North Carolina have identified a raccoon, golden mouse, rufous hawk and eastern owl destroying the nests of these birds.
Video cameras at nests in Arkansas showed the rufous hawk as a more frequent predator and single specimens of owls, the blue jay, the winged hawk, and the eastern armyworm as predators of eggs or young individuals. These cameras also showed one white-tailed deer and one American black bear trampling nests, apparently by accident.
Frightened by predators, adults freeze in the nest and remain motionless for long periods. The incubating females remain motionless until the danger has passed, and the males in the nest will quietly slip away when the danger is gone. The females sit tightly in the nest, allowing predators to approach before flying away; the brown dorsal plumage of the incubating female no doubt masks the plain white eggs that would be visible on the dark nest lining if the female were to leave the nest. Hatching females often allow approaching within a few centimeters.
When a female leaves the nest in the presence of a potential predator, she falls to the ground and flutters like a crippled bird, with her tail and one or both wings lowered, making soft sounds. This is a distraction, probably intended to lure predators out of the nest.
Population and species status
Photo: What a chickadee looks like
According to surveys in the forests of the European part of Russia, there are about 20-25 million brown-headed chickadees. There are probably 5-7 times more of them in Russia. Is it a lot or a little? Amazing coincidence — it turns out that the number of brown-headed chickadees in Russia is approximately equal to the number of people, and in the European part of Russia there are 4 times fewer of them compared to people. It would seem that there should be more birds, especially the most common ones, than people. But it's not. In addition, the number of winterings in the European part of Russia has decreased by more than a quarter over the past three decades.
So, in the 1980-1990s, their estimated number was 26-28 million, in the first decade of 2000 -x – 21-26, in the second – 19-20 million. The reasons for this decline are not entirely clear. The main ones are likely to be massive deforestation and climate change. For brown-headed chickadees, wet winters with thaws are worse than snowy and frosty ones.
Bird lovers in Russia pay great attention to rare species, but the example of the brown-headed chickadee proves that the time has come to think about mass species of birds — in fact, they are not so massive. Especially if you take into account the “savings of nature”: one bird weighs about 12 grams; one person — say — about 60 kg. That is, the biomass of the brown-headed tit is 5 thousand times less than the biomass of people.
Although the number of brown-headed tit and the number of people is approximately the same, think about how many times more do people consume different resources? With such a load, the survival of even the most common species, if they need not an anthropogenic, but a natural habitat, becomes difficult.
Several centuries ago, the brown-headed tit probably followed herds of bison on the Great Plains, feeding insects. Today it follows cattle and is found in abundance from coast to coast. Its spread was bad news for other songbirds: chickadees lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The parasitism of chickadees has pushed some species to the status of “endangered”.
