Fuzzy pink lollipops
Long-Tailed Tits are one of our most loved garden birds. They are tiny, busy, social visitors to urban gardens and country hedges. They travel in family groups in the winter, like performing artists in a travelling circus. A better name for them would be Long-Tailed Bushtits as they’re not very closely related to the other birds called tits in the UK, such as Blue Tits, Great Tits and Coal Tits. Long-Tailed Tits are related to several species in Asia, but are the only member of the family found in the UK and Europe.
When there’s a small family group of Long-Tailed Tits calling overhead, they make a vibrating ‘Tseee-Tseee’ call to keep in contact with one another as they move through. They need to keep everyone together in winter days as they’re going to need each other’s body heat in the bitterly cold nights that follow. They weigh the same as a £1 coin. Their communal roosts are a delight to see.
Only one in every six nests of Long-Tailed Tits is successful in raising a brood, they only have one brood a year and they only live for two years. That means if you ever see a nest of Long-Tailed Tits there could be three, four or more adults busy feeding the chicks, as all their aunts and uncles help out by bringing flies, spiders and caterpillars. Their nests are extraordinary constructions, taking three weeks to build, made of thousands of items of lichen and moss stuck together with spiders’ webs and filled with up to 2,000 small feathers.
I think that they look like fuzzy pink lollipops. There are many wonderful folk names for Long-Tailed Tits. My favourites include Mumruffin, Poke Pudding and Huggen-Muffin but the best of all is surely Bumbarrel. There were so many different local names for Long-Tailed Tits in the UK it used to be possible to identify where someone was from just by the name they gave them.
Do you have a favourite name for them?
More Long-Tailed Tits
Bumbarrels I can hear the Bumbarrels calling. There's a distinctive contact call which they use as family groups move from tree… read more
The eggs have hatched Last year I was disappointed when the two Long-Tailed Tits nests I found were also found by predators. That meant… read more
Long-Tailed Bushtits in blossom The Long-Tailed Bushtits are still trailing in large caravans across the countryside, making desperate dashes between cover in family groups.… read more
Bumbarrels on parade There's a small group of Long-Tailed Bushtits calling overhead. They're vibrating a 'Tseee-Tseee' call amongst the empty branches as they… read more
2020 highlights of a wilder Devon life 2020 is a year which will be difficult to forget for those of us lucky enough to still be alive.… read more
Return to the Long-Tailed Bushtits You may have read my blogs about the Long-Tailed Bushtit family which took up a week of my life. Once… read more
Babies! I was recently informed on Facebook (if that's even possible) that young birds are called chicks and not babies. Someone… read more
The Caterpillar Service – Day Eight I only have a snatched hour with the Long-Tailed Bushtits today. I still get some lovely views. I've been trying… read more