Long-tailed Tit

Aegithalos caudatus

The long-tailed tit or long-tailed bushtit is a common bird species belonging to the bushtit family found throughout Eurasia. An insectivore, it inhabits deciduous and mixed woodlands as well as scrub, heathland, farmland, parks and gardens. The plumage of this small long-tailed bird is predominantly black and white with varying amounts of pink and grey. Northern subspecies are paler and have completely white heads, lacking the large dark eyebrows of southern populations. It is a social bird that forms compact family flocks of six to seventeen individuals outside of the breeding season, when these flocks break up. It has a strong preference for nesting in scrub areas and often builds its nest in thorny bushes less than 3 metres above the ground. Source

Where it is now

In the last 8 weeks this bird was recorded 3,206,161 times across 67 areas (each area is a 5 degree square).

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Movement and weather

Each season it is first heard regularly where daytime highs are around 21°C (typically 18 to 28°C, from 25 areas). That range is wide, so temperature alone does not explain when it turns up.

Over the weeks it was present in the past year, its centre in Europe ranged from 47°N in May to 59°N in October, about 1,400 km apart.

Arrival dates

The week it was first heard regularly in each region, after at least six weeks away. Dates differ from south to north, so a region has a range.

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Figures are effort corrected and come from automatic sound identification, which makes mistakes. How this is measured and how it compares with human observers.