Tits, bushtits and penduline tits

I drew these Black-throated tits, a.k.a. Black-throated bushtits, a.k.a. Aegithalos concinnus, a.k.a. Mésange à tête rousse, from a photo on Pinterest because they are cute, strikingly patterned and resemble chickadees. I couldn’t find any information on the photographer. The last drawing I posted was of a Black-capped chickadee and drawing it reminded me of a more colourful but similarly shaped and patterned bird that I came across once on the interwebs. A few Google searches for tit photos (ha ha ha) and I found the cute bird flitting about in my memory.

Before posting the drawing, I wanted to read some interesting facts about these birds. The first link Google suggested was a Wikipedia page which started with “in older sources, ‘black-throated tit’ can also mean the rufous-naped tit or the rufous-vented tit, which are true tits”.

True tits? Which implies that Black-throated tits are false tits? Why are some tits true and some tits false???

I thought about some tits I’ve met. Chickadees (genus Poecile): Black-capped, Boreal, Chestnut-backed… true tits? Bushtits, a.k.a. American Bushtits, a.k.a. Psaltriparus minimus? Verdins, Auriparus flaviceps, the only American members of the penduline tit family? Parus is latin for tit and aurum is latin for gold.

And then I Googled some non-American tits. The Long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus, shares a genus with the Black-throated tit. I sketched the birds below with a black Bic pen from Hokkaido Long-tailed tit photos . If the drawings had colour, the scapulars would be a light terracotta and the flanks would have a blushing hint of terracotta. There are different subspecies of this tit, which vary in feather colouration.

 

The Great tit, Parus major, Mésange charbonnière, and the Eurasian blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, Mésange bleue, are cute and colourful; they are common throughout Europe; and they appear frequently near bird feeders in photos on European webpages. I used all kinds of media to draw these birds on basic white printer paper – a Micron pen, a graphite pencil, coloured pencils and three brands of markers! Good times!

 

The short answer to my true-or-false-tit query is that there are three “tit” families – Remizidae, Paridae and Aegithalidae. All the members of the Paridae family are the true tits. The tits in the other two families are false tits. The penduline tits (Remizidae) and the bushtits (Aegithalidae) are false tits. Note that the Long-tailed tit mentioned above is now referred to as the Long-tailed bushtit. John H. Boyd III has a well organized, informative and up-to-date website dealing with bird taxonomy.

Tits are in the Passeri clade (all songbirds). The Passeri are split into Basal Oscines, Corvida and Passerida. The upper portion of the Passerida tree is below (from John H. Boyd III), with the Remizidae, Paridae and Aegithalidae highlighted. I also highlighted the Bearded reedling because it is sometimes called the Bearded tit.

If anyone feels like colouring some tits… (Don’t forget to give the Eurasian blue tit some tail feathers. I forgot to draw them before colouring the birds.)

 

Are you still reading? Feeling kind of excited about scientific names? Are you wondering why the Wood-Warblers, a.k.a. New World Warblers, are in the Parulidae family?

In 1758, Linnaeus named the Northern parula, a New World Warbler, Parus americanus, classifying it as a tit. As taxonomy developed, the species name changed from Parus americanus to Parulus americanus to Parula americana. The family name Parulidae was derived from the genus name Parula. The scientific name for Northern Parulas is now Setophaga americana. (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2)