How to Identify the Tufted Titmouse when Backyard Birding in Winter

Video Transcript

Hello, welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Important Bird Areas Program and we’re here this afternoon at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshville, Massachusetts. Next we’re going to talk about backyard birding, a place where everybody has an opportunity to get involved and where many people's interest in birding first begins. Closely related to the Black Capped Chickadee is the Tufted Titmouse, another frequent visitor to backyard suburban feeders. The tufted titmouse however, unlike the Black Capped Chickadee is a species that’s a relative new comer to New England. Here in Massachusetts tufted titmouse didn’t actually start nesting until sometime in the early 1960’s and like the northern cardinal and northern mocking bird, they were southern species that all three began to expand their range northward into New England about that same period of time. Titmice are easily recognized, they’re sort of bluish grey on top with buffy flanks and light colored under parts, a black biddy eye and a very distinctive tuft or crest on the top of the head. Like the black capped chickadee they regularly feed on sunflower seeds and will routinely make multiple visits to a loose sight filled tube filled black oil, where they’ll take seed, fly back to a perch, hold it between their feet, crack it open much like the closely related chickadees and then return for another seed.

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