Day 188 - Marvellous Marsh Tits

Hi All, today's day 188. Didn't get very far this weekend, taking it easy as next week is SAT's week and I have a solid week of exams. So I've been looking through my photo's and I found another bird that I haven't covered yet. One photo was easy to find and I uncovered it when doing my Blackcap post but I wanted to find another couple to do this little bird justice. I covered the very similar Willow tit back on Day 16 and I see them a lot more than today's subject - the Marsh Tit.

Rievaulx Abbey on a misty Autumn morning -
a bank rises up behind it to where the terraces are

The little chaps in these photos I saw at Rievaulx Terrace & Temples a lovely National Trust property and a great place for wildlife and views of the wonderful countryside including Rievaulx Abbey below the terrace. It's not far from the North York Moors visitor centre at Sutton Bank so it's a great area to visit.

So I did my research and here's what I found:

• The first thing I found out is that they are a red status bird! They have had amber status from at least 1996 and Red status since 2002 due to breeding population declines.

• There are around 41,000 breeding territories in the UK but they also have a large range across Europe and Asia. Across this range their numbers are decreasing but thankfully not rapidly.

Marsh Tit (Poecile palustris)

• In the UK they live mainly in England and Wales, perhaps a little bit of Southern Scotland.

• Rievaulx Terrace has some lovely deciduous woods my family like to walk in and it turns out broadleaf woodland are the favoured habitat of the Marsh Tit. They also like copses, parks and sometimes gardens.

• I was also surprised to find out that if they have a good food source they will act a bit like a squirrel and make a cache of seeds hiding them away for another day. The part of their brain that remembers things, the hippocampus, is larger than a Great Tit.

• In the summer they mainly eat insects and spiders and in the Winter add in nuts, seeds and berries - including those that they tucked away!

They don't sit still long - moved away from me a bit! 

• They have a minute typical lifespan of just 2 years but the oldest of its species lived for 8 years longer! Yup, that's right. 10 years, 1 month and 26 days.

• They have a tiny length of just 12cm and their wingspan is 19cm. Both Male and Female birds weigh 12g.

• As they are a small bird they only have small eggs which weigh just 1.2g, I still find it amazing a little living creature comes from something so small.

• I mentioned at the start that they are very similar to the Willow Tit, but I didn't say that they are so similar that ornithologists didn't recognise them as separate species until 1871.

• There's a handy BTO guide that helps to tell them apart. A useful way to identify them is though their song and you can here them on the BTO page.

So, I hope that's given a nice background to these lovely birds but if you want to find out more try:

BTO Birdfacts - Marsh Tit

RSPB - Marsh Tit

British Garden Birds - Marsh Tit

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.