The Science of Birds - Chickadees, Tits, and Titmice

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

This is Episode 91. It’s all about birds in the family Paridae. These are the chickadees, tits, and titmice—cute little forest-dwelling songbirds known and loved by many people around the world.I���ve had a lot of requests to make a podcast episode about chickadees and their kind. Some species in this family are familiar visitors to backyard bird feeders. They’re highly active, vocal, bold, and sometimes quite confiding with people. It’s possible to gain the trust of tits and chickadees of some species by feeding them seeds out of the palm of your hand.These birds not only visit bird feeders regularly, at least in winter, but they’ll also happily lay eggs in artificial nest boxes. All of these traits make birds in the Paridae family great subjects for scientists who want to study bird behavior and ecology.So chickadees, tits, and titmice are among the most well-studied songbirds on the planet. Lucky for us here on The Science of Birds podcast, that means there’s a lot we can learn about them Links of Interest Ground Tit [VIDEO] ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the science of birds. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode 91. It's all about birds in the family parody. Not parody, P-A-R-O-D-Y, like the Austin Powers movies or The Onion News. The Avian Family Parody is spelled differently, P-A-R-I-D-A-E. These are the chickadees, tits, and titmice. Cute little forest-dwelling birds known and loved by many people around the world.

But as you flip through your bird field guide or scroll in your bird ID app, you might notice that there are some other types of birds that have the word tit as part of their name. For example, there are tit spine tails, tit tyrants, shrike tits, tit bearer. pickers, bush tits, tom tits, penduline tits, and long-tailed tits. Oh, and let's not forget the tit eagles, tit pipers, and dumpster tits. None of those birds are in the family parody, and some of them don't even exist since I just made them up for the purpose of high comedy. According to the bird name book by Susan Myers, the word tit came into the English language in the 1500s. Its origin is Scandinavian, and it means something small, in this case small birds. I've had a lot of requests

to make a podcast episode about chickadees and their kind. Some species in this family are familiar visitors to backyard bird feeders. They're highly active, vocal, bold, and sometimes quite confiding with people. It's possible to gain the trust of tits and chickadees of some species by feeding them seeds out of the palm of your hand. These birds not only visit feeders regularly, at least in winter, but they'll also happily lay eggs in artificial nest boxes. All of these traits make birds in the Paradis family great subjects for scientists who want to study bird behavior and ecology. So that means chickadees, tits, and titmice are among the most well-studied songbirds on the planet.

Lucky for us here on the Science of Birds podcast, that means there's a lot we can learn about them. Birds in the family parody are, for the most, part small, with stocky bodies and large heads. Well, their heads look to me anyway like they're a bit oversized proportionally, like a bobblehead. And I think that's one reason these birds are so dang cute. Their big heads make them look like babies or like cartoon characters. In any case, the general shape and size of these birds is remarkably consistent across all the species. birds in most other families show more variation among the species. The heads of most members of the Paradis family are smooth-looking and rounded,

but some species have jazzy little crests on their heads. For example, there's the crested tit found across Europe. The scientific name of this bird is Lofofanis Christatus. Lofos means crest in Greek, and Lofofofanis Christatus translates as something like the bird with a crest that shows its crest. Okay, to the scientists who named this bird, I have a question. I'm not sure I understand the situation here.

Are you telling me this bird has some kind of, like a crest on its head? I just need some more clarification. The bills of parid birds are short and some somewhat. what stout. Bills, beaks with this shape are perfect for generalist birds that eat both insects and seeds. Some species have bills with a narrower, finer shape, and those guys eat more bugs. Other species that focus on seeds have, you guessed it, thicker bills. Interestingly, the bill shape of some tit species might be changing rapidly these days. According to Wikipedia, and I quote,

It is said that great tits are evolving longer beaks to reach into bird feeders. End quote. It is said? What do you mean it is said? What is this, an ancient prophecy from a kid's fantasy cartoon? It is said that long ago in the age of calamity, from the chaos of fire and bloodshed, a small bird shall arise.

This bird will at first have a beak that is both short and stout. But over time, the beak will, through the arcane process known as evolution, become ever so slightly longer, imperceptibly so, to the common human mortal, but statistically significant nonetheless. But for real, though, the Wikipedia article was referring to a study published in 2017, in the highly prestigious journal, Science. This study found genetic evidence underlying the longer beaks found in great-tit populations in the UK compared to the beaks of great tits in the Netherlands.

Longer beaks presumably allow the little buggers to have an improved ability to reach the seeds in a bird feeder. So natural selection could be at work here, right? and it turns out that people in the U.K. spend about twice as much money on bird seed and related paraphernalia than people in the Netherlands do. Birds in the U.K. that have the genes for a longer bill tend to have higher reproductive fitness, and they spend more time foraging at bird feeders than birds that lack these genes. Anyway, that was a little digression about the great tit that gives you just one example of the kinds of research scientists conduct on birds in this family. Getting back to looking at the Paradee family as a whole, let's consider their body sizes. At the small end of the spectrum is the fire-capped tit, with a total length of about 3.5 inches, which is 8.9 centimeters.

The fire-capped tit represents the most ancient or primitive species within the family parody. These tiny warbler-like birds breed in the Himalayas and in central China. Males are yellow with a splash of orange or red on the face. The scientific name for the fire-capped tit is cephalopyrus flammiceps. If we break this name down and consider its meaning, it basically translates as Head Flame Flamehead. That's right, Head Flame, Flamehead.

And then we have the not-so-small end of the size spectrum. There we find the Sultan-Tit, Melanaclora Saltanea, a bird found in the lowland and sub-montane forests of Southeast Asia. With a name like Sultan-Tit, I can't help but imagine this bird wearing a large turban on its head. You know, like Princess Jasmine's dad in Disney's Aladdin movie.

Anyway, the Sultan tit is the largest member of the family, measuring up to 8.3 inches or 21 centimeters from beak to tail. It may not wear a turban, but it does have a flashy lemon-y lemon-yellow crest, like a really fantastic-looking crest. The bird also has a bright yellow belly and plumage that is otherwise a glossy black. This is a colorful and handsome bird. It's not your typical tit or chickadee. This leads us into plumage.

As I mentioned, the body shapes of species in the family parody don't very much. It's in the plumage coloration where we find the most variation in this family. For bird groups like this, my friend Steve likes to make an analogy with cars. Same make and model, but with different paint jobs. The paint jobs of parrid birds range from a mostly dull brown to combinations of black, white, and gray, to some more colorful combinations that include blue, yellow, or chestnut red. Among the most colorful and beautiful are the three species in the genus Cyanisties, as in Cyan, the greenish-blue color, right?

The species are Eurasian blue tit, African blue tit, and azure tit. These birds have plumages that combine blue, yellow, black, and white. Azure tits live in the temperate latitudes of Asia, from Russia to eastern China. Some subspecies of the azure tit lack any yellow in their plumage. They're mostly frosty white all over, but with lovely blue in the wings back and tail. They look to me like delicious little snow cones that magically came to life one day. They're adorable. Then we have birds like the Himalayan black lord tit, Maclolophus Xanthogenes.

This striking beauty is yellow and black with a perky black crest, white bars and spots in the wings, and an iridescent blue sheen on the flight feathers. The genus Peasily, spelled P-O-E-C-I-L-E, includes all the new world species we call chickadees, as well as some old-world species like the willow tit and marsh tit. Birds in the genus Paisily have plumages that are some mixture of brown, buff, chestnut, and gray. They all have black throats and black or brown caps, and most have white cheeks.

Among the perid species with the darkest plumages are the dusky tit, which is sooty black all over, and the white fronted tit, which is black except for a small white forehead patch. Almost all birds in this family have dark-colored eyes, but a couple species have pale irises. One example of the latter is the white-shouldered black tit of sub-Saharan Africa. Another common name for this species is pale-eyed black tit. The plumages of chickadeesities tits and titmice don't very much between males and females.

So there isn't much sexual dichromatism. In terms of behavior, birds in the family parody tend to be highly energetic and vocal. They move through the branches and foliage quickly and call to each other seemingly constantly. These are generally social birds, at least during the non-breeding season when they aren't defending territories. They hang out with members of their own species in the winter or in mixed flocks with other species. It is said that, legend has it, that chickadees and their parrids are among the smartest birds in the world, after the corvids and the parrots. Intelligence is multifaceted, of course, and not always easy to quantify. But it's true that many birds in the family parody excel in at least one aspect of intelligence,

and that's memory. Species living in habitats like boreal and montane forests rely on caches of stored food in winter, when invertebrate prey are scarce. They store seeds and dead insects. insects to prepare for winter. Birds that do this include boreal chickadee, mountain chickadee, and black-capped chickadee. These little buggers can remember the locations of hundreds or thousands of food caches up to a month after depositing them. Researchers have discovered that the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory, is proportionally extra-large

in parried birds, at least in the species that store food for the winter. Another fascinating story that tells us something about the intelligence of birds in this family is what happened in the U.K. with milk bottles. Have you heard this story? In the early 20th century, people in the U.K. would have their fresh milk delivered by the milkman. He'd leave bottles of milk on people's doorsteps. Starting in 1929, some cheeky little Eurasian blue tits, cyanosteus, in a town called Swathling, figured out how to pry off the waxed cardboard caps on the milk bottles.

The tits were not after the milk. What they wanted was the fat, rich cream on top. Pretty soon, milk wagons across Swathling were being chased by flocks of hangary blue tits. The birds had discovered a valuable and reliable source of calories, and they were insatiable. This cream-thieving behavior spread from bird to bird, cross the island of Great Britain over the next 20 years. The birds learned from each other, and this is an example of culture spreading among animals.

And another species, the Great Titt, also figured out how to bust into milk bottles. I love it. Birds in the family parody are a talkative bunch. They've got a lot to say. Many of them call almost non-stop as they go about their business during the day. They have extensive repertoires of calls, with each vocalization communicating something different. The black-capped chickadee, for example, makes at least 16 unique sounds.

It has calls to maintain a territory, calls used by mates to keep in contact, calls to maintain group cohesion, aggressive calls, calls used to mob predators, and so on. The name Chickadee, actually comes from one of the vocalizations made by the black-capped chickadee and its close relatives. It's the chick-a-dee call, and it sounds like this. Chick-a-D-call-to-a-d-all to communicate a variety of things. The call notes can be combined in a complex number. of ways. One version of this call is made by a chickadee that has just discovered an exciting food source, like a bird feeder packed with sunflower seeds. The chickadee call is also used when mobbing a predator.

Researchers discovered that the number of D notes at the end of the call seems to communicate the threat level of the predator. The more threatening the predator, the more D notes are added to the call. Avian predators that hunt small songbirds are a code red and they get about four Ds on average. Such threats would be birds like the Northern Pygmy Owl and the Merlin. But if you're walking in the woods one day and suddenly you hear some chickadees making a chickadee call and there are like 25 D's at the end, oh man, you better run because those chickadees are telling you there's a really nasty predator lurking nearby. We're talking about something like a werewolf, a chupacabra, or maybe even a Mongolian deathworm. Another vocalization of the black-capped chickadee is the

fee-bee song. It's used to attract mates or to advertise the edge of a territory. Here are some chickadees singing the fee-bee song on a spring day in Minnesota. The scientific name for the black-capped chickadee is Peasily Atricapillus. Perhaps its closest relative is Peasily Carapelis. Carolinensis, the Carolina chickadee. This next recording is of a Carolina chickadee singing. Not in North Carolina or South Carolina, where it's supposed to be, but in Virginia.

Notice the similarity of this song to that of the black-capped chickadee. And then we have the mountain chickadee, Pissilee Gambley. Here's one recorded singing in the forests of British Columbia, Canada. Here where I live in the Pacific Northwest, we have a member of the Paradis family that's unique to the western edge of North America. It's the chestnut-backed chickadee, Pissilee Rufessens. Here are some chestnut-backed chickadees in California making a variegated. variety of squeaky calls. So those were some examples of vocalizations for New World parrids.

Let's go over to the old world now and listen to some species there. First up are a couple of recordings from France. There are the sounds of those cheeky little scamps that like to pilfer the cream from milk bottles, the great tit, Paris Major, and the Eurasian blue tit, Cyanostes, Cirulius. Here's the rollicking song of a great tit. And here's a Eurasian blue tit. Fun fact, the name for the Eurasian blue tit in the Dutch language is Pimplemaeis. And in German, the word is Blau Meza.

Pimplemese and Blau Meza. We'll come back later to consider the second halves of these words, Mace and Meza. But right now, let's listen to some more lovely bird vocalization. Next up we have one of those little snow cone birds, the azure tit, Cyanistee's Cyanis. This recording was made in a riparian forest along the river Chaurin in southeastern Kazakhstan. Traveling now way down to South Africa, near, Cape Town, we have a recording of the gray tit,

Melana Paris Afer. That's a nice little song, isn't it? Again, that was the gray tit. Now, remember the sultan tit? It's black and yellow all over with a big crest on its turban-less head, and it's the largest speed. in the family parody? Well, here's a sultan tit singing and calling in the rainforests of northern Vietnam. Another recording made in Thailand,

features a couple sultan tits calling to each other. I was really hoping to see my first sultan tit in Vietnam when I was traveling there recently. It was one of my target species. But on the day that I was finally going to be birding in a forest where I could find, sultan tits, I got sick, and had to hunker down in my hotel room instead. What a bummer. But that's how it goes sometimes.

There's one more thing I want to add about the vocalizations of birds in the family parody. Many species make scolding calls. These sounds are generally buzzy and high-pitched. Skold calls are meant to alert other members of the flock that there's some kind of danger nearby. perhaps a slavering chupacabra with glowing red eyes. Who knows? In the birding world, there's something called pishing. A birder makes some pishing sounds while out in the field, and those are meant to mimic bird calls. With luck, some birds will come flitting over to see what all the fuss is about.

For example, the typical pishing sound I use is psh, psh, something like that. I'm not like a master of pishing or anything, but it really does work, at least sometimes, in some regions. Actual scientific research tells us that pishing works because it sounds like the scold calls of chickadees and titmice. The pishing sounds made by humans share certain acoustic properties with perid scold calls. When a birder pishes, the sound can rile up a swarm of songbirds, chickadees, tits, and such, yes, but also species from other families, warblers, wrens, kinglets, sparrows, and more. These birds fly in close to investigate the source of the pishing sound

to see if they need to start mobbing, to go on the offensive and kick some predator butt. In this next section of the episode, we'll talk about the diversity, distribution, and habitats of chickadee's, tits, and titmice. The family name, Parody, comes from the Latin word Paris. No, not like, oh-huh-ha! Not Paris, France, P-A-R-I-R-I-R-R-R.

I-S, but instead P-A-R-U-S. In Latin, Paris was simply the name for the bird, a tit or a tit-mouse. And Paris is still the name of a genus in this family. The great tit, you might remember, has the scientific name, Paris Major. Paris is just one of the 13 genera in the family, Parody. And the family contains 63 species. Well, that's the current number of species according to the Clements checklist. The number of species is slightly different according to other bird checklists.

The genus that contains the greatest number of species is none other than Peasily. This is the genus that includes the black-capped mountain and Carolina chickadees. There are 15 species in the genus Peasily. This name comes from the Greek word poikilos, meaning spotted or varied. The second most diverse genus in the family is Melanaparis, with 14 species. Melanaparis. The first part there, Melana, might remind you of the word melanin. In ancient Greek, melanos meant black or dark. And indeed, most of the species in the genus Melanaparis have plumages that are mostly black.

Zooming back out to higher levels of taxonomy, we see that Paradee the family is nested within the order Paseroformis. So chickadees, tits, and titmice are passerine birds. And they're classified as songbirds as well, since their family belongs within the suborder passerai. All songbirds belong to the suborder passerai. So, which other birds out there are the closest relatives of our beloved parrids?

How about some of those birds out there with names that include tit? You know, the ones I mentioned earlier, like Shrike tits, tit berry pickers, bush tits, tom tits, all of those critters. Well, it turns out that only one of those other families is closely related to the family parody, and that is the family remissidy. These are the 11 species of penduline tits. In the new world, we have only one species from the family remissidy, and that's the Verdon, V-E-R-D-I-N. Europe, too, has just one species,

the Eurasian penduline tit. Now, how about subdivisions? In other words, different lineages or sub-families within the family parody. Remember earlier that I said the smallest species in the family, the fire-capped tit represents the most ancient lineage. The next most ancient or primitive species is the similarly tiny yellow-browed tit,

followed by none other than the sultan tit. The remaining 60 species are sort of evenly divided into two major lineages, two clades. In one of those clades, the birds have two behavioral traits. One, they hoard food by making caches of seeds and dead insects. And two, they sometimes excavate their own nest cavities in soft or rotting wood. This is the hoarding clade. This group includes all of the chickadeies in the genus Peasily, as well as the titmice,

the crested tit of Europe, and some others. Species in the second clade do not hoard food, and they never excavate their own nests. So bird species in the family parody are kind of like people. They're divided into hoarders and non-horters. I'd like to think that I am a non-horder, but my ever-growing collection of bird books might point to the contrary. I don't know. Maybe I need someone to do an intervention. In any case, human hoarders even have the...

own reality TV show that's been running for like 15 years. I've never watched it. But hey, if they ever make a reality show about chickadees, scampering around in the forest, stashing seeds in tree bark and whatnot, you better believe I'd watch that show. Briefly, I want to point out that some parrids species have lots of diversity within them. That is, they have lots of intraspecific variation, as in subspecies. The Great Tit is a great example. This bird has an enormous geographic range, from Western Europe all the way to the east coast of northern China. Depending on which expert you ask, the Great Tit has somewhere between 15 and 40 subspecies. However, genetic data from DNA suggests it might be more appropriate to treat many of these subspecies,

as full species. And indeed, a couple great tit subspecies have already been elevated to full species status. One of them is the Japanese tit, Paris Minor. The coal tit, Paraparis Ader, is another species with loads of intraspecific variation. Ornithologists have identified about 20 subspecies in the coal tit. Some of the coal tit subspecies look so different from each other that if you didn't know any better, you'd bet good money that they're actually separate species and not just subspecies. And like those of the great tit, one subspecies of coal tit or another is found from sea to shining sea, from Ireland to Kamchatka across the breadth of Eurasia. And speaking of Eurasia, let's talk about the global distribution of birds in the family parody.

These charming little birds are found in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. South America and Australia are conspicuously lacking in parrot species. You might remember the podcast episode I did on the biogeographic barrier known as Wallace's Line. That was episode 46. Well, just one representative of the family parody has managed to spread from Asia to some islands in Indonesia that lie to the east of Wallace's line. That species is the Cinerius tit, Paris Cinerius. And FYI, the Cinerius tit, like the Japanese tit, was until recently considered to be a subspecies of the great tit. Cinerious tits have already crossed

the barrier of Wallace's line. So what's stopping them from colonizing Australia? Who knows? But if they do, the average cuteness of Australia's Ava fauna will go up a few notches. Oh, yeah, and I guess I'm obligated to inform you that there's one other continent upon which you will find no chickadees, no tits, and no titmice. It should really go without saying, but surprise, there are no perids in Antarctica. The average cuteness of Antarctica's Ava Fana is abysmal. Well, okay, yes, I know there are penguins down there. So I guess that's something. They're pretty cute.

But if it weren't for the penguins, I'm just saying. Anyway, moving on. Numbers-wise, there are 12 parrided species in North America, about nine in Europe, 17 in Africa, and about 38 in Africa. in Asia. So, that's the global distribution of the family parody. But I should point out that some individual species have incredibly vast ranges. The champion here is probably the gray-headed chickadee, Pisa Lee Singtis, formerly known as the Siberian chickadee. This species is found from Norway to, yes, Siberia, and even across the Bering Strait into Alaska. This is the only

member of the family with populations in both the old world and the new world. Weirdo alert. Weirdo alert. Look out, everybody! It's time for the weirdo alert! The Sultan tit is not only the largest species by far in the family parody, it also belongs to one of the most ancient lineages. And with its bright yellow crest and... And, sorry, wait, wait, I'm receiving a message here. I'm being told that the sultan tit is not.

I repeat, not today's weirdo bird. Move over sultan tit because there's an even weirder weirdo in the family parody, a species I haven't even mentioned yet. And that is the ground tit. Pseudocis humulus. This bird is a year-round resident of, high-elevation grasslands on the Tibetan plateau of India, China, Nepal, and Bhutan. The ground tit is so divergent in appearance from even its closest relatives that you'd never

guess it's a tit. In fact, this bird used to be considered the world's smallest crow. That's right, ornithologists had placed this species in the family. Corvidi, thinking it was most closely related to the ground jays of Central Asia. And it really does look a lot like a miniature ground jay. Other names the ground tit had in the past include Hume's groundpecker, Hume's ground jay, and Tibetan ground jay. The current genus name for this species, pseudopodesies, translates as false ground jay. The genus for the four real ground jays is potases, and that means swift-footed.

So, pseudopodosies, false ground jay. The ground tit is the only species in this genus. Research on this bird in the early 2000s used the comparative anatomy of bone structure and genetic information from DNA to reveal that, This ain't no groundpecker and it ain't no ground jay. and it's certainly not a ground hog. Nope, it's a ground tit. The striking similarity between this bird and the ground jays

is the result of convergent evolution. I can imagine the ground tit being heartbroken when a representative of the Guinness Book of World Records knocked on its door one day and demanded that it give back its trophy for being the world's smallest crow. The bird has been stripped of that honorable distinction. No thanks to scientists and their fancy genetic analyses. But maybe I can cheer up the ground tit by giving it a shiny new trophy to acknowledge what makes the bird special as we now

understand it. The trophy will have an inscription that says, Weirdest Weirdo in the Family Parody. Anyway, let's look at the ground tit's appearance, and I'll make sure to put a photo in the show notes on the Science of Bird's website. It's large for a parrot, about the size of a sparrow. Its plumage is tawny brown on top and a dingy gray below. Maybe the weirdest thing compared to other tits and chickadees is the bill. The ground tit has a long, down-curved bill. It's totally unlike any other bill in the family parody.

There aren't any trees where this bird lives, so it spends most of its time, well, on the ground. With its long legs, it hops and jumps along on the grass or bare soil. Here's a quote from one ornithologist. The most conspicuous behavioral character of Hume's groundpecker, i.e. ground it, is the typical bouncing gait, which, together with the compact shape of the bird, has led some authors to make an apt comparison with a rubber ball. Indeed, I saw leaps of about three times the bird's total length,

which were performed in sequence without any flaps of the wings, thus making the moving bird extremely difficult to track. End quote. When the bird does stop, it tends to stand upright, sort of like a weed ear, if you can picture what a weed ear looks like. Ground tits aren't nearly as vocal as their cousins. They're silent most of the time. But here's a recording made in China, and I think there are two ground tits vocalizing here.

The habitat of these birds is Alpine Steppe, S-T-E-P-P-E, on the Tibetan Plateau. Ground tits live mostly at elevations above 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters. so way up there. The arid, rocky grasslands on the plateau have no trees, only patches of shrubs. It's common for ground tits to live near PICA colonies. You know, PICA's, those adorable cousins of rabbits that live in high elevation habitats. Ground tits dive into holes when predators approach, and since PICA's dig burrows, there are plenty of safety holes in a PICA colony.

So how did this lovable weirdo get so weird? What's the origin story for the ground tit? Scientists hypothesize that long ago, a perid species colonized the Tibetan plateau, when there were still some forests there. That ancestral bird was most likely something like a great tit. This would have been at least three million years ago before the high-step ecosystems spread across the Tibetan plateau. As the geologic uplift of the plateau continued, the environment got colder and dried out, and so trees disappeared. The ancestors of the ground tit gradually adapted to a new way of life, a life of hopping through the grass and of digging in the dirt with a long, curved bill. Today, pseudopodeses humulus is the only

member of the family parody that lives in a treeless environment. In a 2012 paper published in the journal Nature Communications, scientists offered genetic evidence that this bird is adapted to life at high altitude. The ground-tit genome shows signs that natural selection has favored some genes related to low-oxygen response, to energy metabolism, and to skeletal development. Ground tits eat insects and other arthropods. They forage by poking their curved bills into rock crevices and digging in the dirt. They flip over piles of yak dung to snatch up any bugs hiding underneath. Not surprisingly, ground tits nest on the ground.

Well, I should say in the ground. They nest in deep burrows, excavated in soft ground or eroded banks. And apparently the birds dig their own burrows. Some sources say that ground tits don't use any of those pica holes as nesting sites. But other sources say that the tits use rodent burrows for nesting, so who knows. The ground tit is actually a cooperative breeder. It's fairly common for one or more of last year's offspring to stick around and help their parents raise the next brood. These helpers are usually males.

So there you go, the ground tit, a weird and wonderful member of the family parody. Returning now to look at the general habitats of birds in the family parody, we find that these are birds of the forest. Some live in boreal forests of the far north, while others live in lowland or montane tropical forests. A few species, like our buddy the ground, hit live in more arid habitats. How about I give you a few examples of species and their specific habitats? First up is the Carolina chickadee. This bird is found across the southeastern

United States. It lives in low elevation broadleaf woodlands. It's particularly fond of forests along the edges of streams and along the edges of clearings. Carolina chickadees are also common in parks and suburban habitats, wherever there are plenty of trees. Next, we have the Eurasian blue tit. In Europe, this species is found in oak woodlands, parks, hedgerows, and orchards. Blue tits prefer deciduous trees over conifers. Given how much these guys love cream, however, if they were smart, you'd think they'd go live at dairy farms.

Anyway, next up is the white-bellied tit. Melanaparis Alba Ventris, and it's found in East Africa. This bird uses a wide variety of habitat types, including the edges of montane evergreen forest, acacia woodlands, savannas, orchards, and gardens. So those were just a few examples of habitats used by birds in this family. Some species in the family parody give us beautiful examples of a biological phenomenon called habitat segregation.

This is where two or more similar species coexist in the same location by using resources differently. For example, in the broadleaf woodlands of Europe, you can find great tits, marsh tits, and Eurasian blue tits, all living side by side in apparent harmony. They could potentially fight each other, or at least compete with each other, as they forage for the same invertebrate prey. but they avoid conflict and competition by foraging in different micro-habitats within the same forest. Blue tits search for bugs on small twigs, while marsh tits do so on larger branches. Great tits, meanwhile, forage on the ground. So again, that is habitat segregation. Parrid bird species in general live in their respective habitats all year long.

These birds are not long-distance migrants. Some species, however, are altitudinal migrants, moving up and down mountain slopes with the seasons. All right, it's time to say a few more things about the evolution of the family parody. This family and its sister family, Ramizadee, together form a branch of the avian tree called paroidia. Paroidia belongs in a taxonomic unit that scientists call a superfamily. This superfamily seems to have split off

from all other birds roughly 30 million years ago. And then a few million years later, the family's parody and remissidy split to become unique lineages and go their separate ways. A Swedish scientist named Dr. Ulf S. Johansen, or maybe Johansson, and his colleagues used data from DNA to construct an evolutionary tree for the family parody. Their work was published in 2013 in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.

This parody tree or phylogeny tells us a lot about which species are related to which, and it provides a framework for understanding the evolutionary progression of these birds through time. That's why, earlier, I could tell you about which species represent the oldest lineages within the family parody. And remember that there are those two large clades, the hoarding clade and the non- hoarding clade? We know about the existence of these groups because Dr. Johansen and friends have done the hard work of building this evolutionary tree. So, cheers to them! Or I should say, skull, because Swedish. Dr. Johansson's work also tells us that the cradle of diversity, the Garden of Eden, if you will, for the family parody, is most likely the Sino-Himalayan region.

Sino, S-I-N-O, refers to China. It comes from the Latin word S-I-N-A-E, which means the Chinese. The Sino-Himalayan region, as described in one scientific paper, includes, quote, the Himalayan. and the adjacent sub-Himalayan region of Indo-Burma, as well as the southwestern and central Chinese mountain ranges. End quote. This is not only a major hotspot of perid species diversity, it's a hotspot of bird diversity in general. Why are there so many bird species in the Sino-Himalayan region?

That's a great question, and I think scientists are still working on the answer. But it probably has something to do with topographic and ecosystem diversity. The menagerie of tit species living in the Sino-Himalayan region today is a colorful bunch. They display a wide array of plumage patterns and ornaments like crests. This is where we find birds I've mentioned like the Himalayan Black Lord tit and the diminutive fire-capped tit. You know, good old head flame flame head? Sometime between eight and five million years ago, tits started spreading outward from their place of origin in the mountains of the Sino-Hemalayan region. They made it over to Africa by five million years ago, and they made it to North America by around that same time.

But there were actually two different colonization events in North America. The first was by the ancestor of today's titmice. Later came the chickadees. Let's talk for a second about the titmice. These are the five species belonging to the genus Beulophus. Remember from when we looked at the scientific name for the crested tit from Europe that Lofos means crest. Well, the titmouse genus Beolophus translates as little crest.

All five species have crests on their heads. Otherwise, these birds have plumages. that are mostly drab, brown, or gray. A couple species, like my favorite, the bridled titmouse, have some black markings on their heads. Let's listen to the song of a tufted titmouse, recorded in a New Hampshire forest. And here we have the calls of an oak titmouse.

It was recorded in the Sierra Nevada of California. Just for fun, see if you can also hear the mountain quail calling in the distance. Now, a little side note about the name Titmouse. What's the deal with the mouse part? Well, according to the bird name book, the origin of mouse in this context was possibly the ancient Greek word for less or small. That eventually came to mean a small bird. The Anglo-Saxon name for some small European birds was titmase, M-A-S-E.

The mace part transformed into mouse over time, probably in the 16th century. But its origin has nothing to do with small rodents. It's just a weird sort of accidental quirk of language evolution. So even though we use the plural form tit mice, we should probably say tit mouses. There are only the five biolophis species today that still bear the common name titmouse in English. But back in the day, there were many species in Europe that were called titmouse in English. That's the original form of the word. The mouse part just got dropped in Europe.

leaving behind only tit. But remember that in languages like Dutch and German, people still include the Mace or MISA part or something similar. It's time to turn our attention to the conservation status of birds in the family parody. According to the IUCN Red List, two species in the family are, at the global level, in the near-threatened category. These are the white-fronted tit and the Palawan tit. One species, the white nape tit, maclolophus Nucalus, is in the vulnerable category.

The white-naped tit lives in India, where it occupies low-elevation acacia thorn-scrub habitat, as well as dry deciduous forests. This species has suffered major population declines over the last hundred years or so. The primary problem is habitat destruction. Today, the white-naped tit lives in only a handful of disjunct habitat patches. But the most threatened perid species of all is probably Austen's tit, Sittaparis Austenai. The other common name for this bird, which I like better, is Isu Tit.

Austen's tit lives on only three small volcanic islands in Japan. These are part of the Izu Island chain, pretty much due south of Tokyo. This endangered bird has an unusual appearance for a perid. It's relatively large and has a robust bill. Its plumage is mostly a rufousy orange color, with black on the cap and on the throat. Austin's tit is endangered because of its tiny geographic range, combined with habitat loss and the ravages of invasive predators. Chickadees, tits, and titmouses, titmice, are for the most. part, insectivorous. However, species living in northerly latitudes or high in the mountains

shift their diets in winter to feeding on seeds, buds, and fruit. Not all seeds are created equal. Some contain more fat and calorie-rich oils than others. Research has found that some chickadee species choose seeds from feeders based on their size and weight. Using these metrics, a chickadee tries to assess the amount of calories a seed has. The biggest seed isn't always the best choice, contrary to what you might think. Sure, big seeds have more calories, but they also take more time to process and eat. A chickadee or tit is more conspicuous and therefore more vulnerable to predators while processing a meal. So when you watch a chickadee, tit or titmouse, grab a seed at your feeder, then fly off to eat or to cash it, this is the kind of life or death decision-making going on

in that bird's teeny tiny brain. The bird will hold a seed with one foot against a tree branch and then hammer at it with its bill. Unlike finches, chickadees and their kind aren't able to crack open a seed using their bill alone. They need to peck at the seed again and again, hammering at it, while holding it steady with the foot. It's not all about seeds in cold winter environments. Perids can also scrounge around in the cold forest for dormant insects, insect eggs, and insect pupy. These nutritious treats lie hidden in bark crevices among dead leaves and on twigs. As one example, let's look at the diet of the willow tit, Paisily Montanus. This species is found in Europe and all across northern Asia. Here is a list of things willow tits are known to eat in the breeding season.

Flies, lace wings, may flies, caddus flies, bees and wasps, ants, beetles, bugs, moths, scale insects, centipede, spiders, harvestmen, mites, snails, and earthworms. In the winter or non-breeding season, these birds switch to eating more plant material. For example, they eat grains like wheat, oats, corn, and barley, and the seeds of plants like burdock, cowberry, cranberry, bilberry, raspberry, snowberry, honeysuckle, poppy, rose, buckthorn, oak, rowan, ash, birch, alder, juniper, lime, maple, beech, aspen, and the list goes on. The typical beak shape of a chickadee or tit, that is short and stout, is well adapted to a generalist diet like this. The parrot bill is like a multi-tool.

Perids forage by flitting and hopping energetically through the branches of a tree. They seem to move and vocalize almost constantly through the day. As David Sibley put it, they are the busy bodies of the forest. You'll often see these birds hanging upside down by their feet as they forage on branch tips. The hoarding clade includes those species, like the boreal chickade and gray-headed chickadee, that are best adapted to life where winters are fiercely cold. Their scatter-horting behavior allows them to have a steady supply of food when there are very few invertebrate prey around.

These birds don't need to migrate south like so many other songbirds. During the autumn months, a busy little chickadee might store 1,000 seeds per day and up to 80,000 seeds before the winter sets in. Chickadees, tits, and titmice often act as the nuclear or the leader species in mixed species flocks during the non-breeding season. These talkative little loud mouths are vigilant. They'll make alarm calls to warn their flockmates of any approaching danger. Those flockmates just need to listen for the number of ds that the chickadees are adding at the end of their calls. If it's more than 20, look out.

there might be a mummy or a Loch Ness monster on the approach. When they aren't sounding the alarm about predators, hammering away at seeds, or hanging upside down in the pursuit of insects, perid birds need to get down to the business of breeding. Chickadees, tits, and tit mice are generally monogamous. Pear bonds persist through the winter and can last for several, years in some species, like the black-capped chickadee. I mentioned earlier that the ground tit is a cooperative breeder.

Some other parrids are also cooperative breeders. These include the African species in the genus Paris and the bridled titmouse. Courtship is involved in the formation of breeding pairs, for many, if not all, species. For example, in the Carolina chickadee, the female makes a begging display by quivering her wings. She also makes a particular call while begging. The male responds by feeding the female. He makes wing quivers too just not as forcefully. Pairs of parrids are territorial during the breeding season.

Ooh, maybe there's a new tongue twister there. Pairs of perids perish in Paris from poison pears. Something like that. I don't know. I'll have to work on that one. Anyway, these breeding pairs sing and call to defend the borders of their territory. This makes sense because all species in this family are cavity nesters. They nest in tree holes, and such holes are a limited resource in the forest.

As I mentioned, species in the hoarding clade will also sometimes carve out their own nest holes in soft wood. Species in the non-horting clade, however, must rely on other birds or, mammals to make those cavities. The nest cavity is lined with soft moss and hair. In terms of eggs, examples of clutch size are 5 to 7 for the mountain chickadee, 5 to 11 for the crested tit, and 7 to 13 eggs for the Eurasian blue tit. In fact, the blue tit is, I believe, the record holder for the largest clutch sizes among passerine birds. Supposedly a to 18 eggs per clutch sometimes. No wonder blue tits are so desperate to gulp down all the cream from our milk bottles. They need gobs of caloric energy so they can mass produce all those eggs.

The female is the one who sits on the pile of eggs, and this is true for parrids in general. Incubation lasts about two weeks. The young birds stay in the nest for another two or three weeks. Both parents feed them. Some chickadee parents have been observed bringing up to 1,000 caterpillars to the nest every day to feed their chicks. That's insane. Once the youngsters have fledged, their parents will keep feeding them. This stage might last less than a week or up to nearly three months. And then our naive little birds are left to fend for themselves. Sadly, many of them don't survive their first summer, much less their first winter. It's a dangerous world out there for young chickadees tits and titmice. What with all the snakes, hawks, and mummies running around?

In studies of the great tit, researchers found that even adult birds have a hard time surviving from one year to the next. Males have a 44% annual survival rate, and females are only a little better off with a 52% survival rate. These kinds of odds translate to short average lifespans for most, if not all, species in the family parody. The black-capped chickadee, average lifespan, 2.5 years. The Carolina chickadee, average lifespan 1.1 years. But there are always the lucky few individuals that somehow beat the odds to live a long time. The oldest black-capped chickadee that I know of was 12 years old. The oldest Carolina chickadee was almost 11.

And the oldest great tit was 15. Unless you live in South America, Australia, or, God forbid, Antarctica, I would bet that you, dear listener, are going to come face-to-face with a bird in the family parody in the near future. In a wild forest or in your backyard. Maybe it'll be a coal tit or a chestnut-backed chickadee or a tufted tit mouse. Or if you're really lucky, a sultan tit. Spend a little time watching these birds when you have a chance.

Notice how active and vocal they are. See if you can figure out what they're doing, what they're foraging for, and what their calls might be communicating. These are some of the world's most charming birds, and we are lucky to share the planet with them. Thanks a million for listening to the podcast today. This is a wonderful group of birds to talk and learn about, and so I hope you enjoyed the episode. Because species like the black-capped chickadee and great tit are so well-studied, there's a lot more I can tell you about their biology.

So my plan is to do entire episodes on each of these and some other parrid species at some point. I look forward to it. I'm able to continue making podcast episodes like this in large part because of the help I get from my supporters on Patreon. So a big thank you to my patrons. I had some recent additions to my Patreon community since the last episode. Welcome, Ken Schneider, Odo Neckenkhanobie. Deb Reber and David Dedrickson. Thanks so much for the support.

If you are thinking about becoming a patron, it is said that you can just check out my Patreon page over at patreon.com slash science of birds. There's also a handy link to my Patreon page in the show notes in your podcast app. And if you have something you'd like to share with me, please go ahead and shoot me an email. Maybe you have a comment about

the podcasts, or you want to share your ideas for bird-themed tongue twisters. Pairs of parrids perish in Paris from poison pears. Still working on it. Or hey, maybe you could tell me what objects you like to hoard in your house. Decorative spoons, empty cereal boxes, cats, whatever it is, you can email me at Ivan at Science of Birds.com. This is episode 91. You can check out the show notes for the episode, along with some photos of the birds I talked about today on the Science of Birds website, Science of Birds.com.

I'm Ivan Philipson. Thanks again for learning about birds with me today, and I'll catch you next time. Cheers.