Aegithalos caudatus
Silhouette: Matt Wilkins (photo by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.net) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The long-tailed tit or long-tailed bushtit (Aegithalos caudatus) 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 (10 feet) above the ground.
The long-tailed tit was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Parus caudatus. The current genus name Aegithalos was a term used by Aristotle for some European tits, including the long-tailed tit. The specific epithet caudatus is the Latin word for "tailed". Linnaeus did not invent this... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 2 | Turin | 🇮🇹 Italy | |
| 3 | Milan | 🇮🇹 Italy | |
| 4 | Seoul | 🇰🇷 South Korea | |
| 5 | Birmingham | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 6 | Daejeon | 🇰🇷 South Korea | |
| 7 | Sendai | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 8 | London | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 9 | Gwangju | 🇰🇷 South Korea | |
| 10 | Budapest | 🇭🇺 Hungary |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beijing Wildlife Park | 🇨🇳 China |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Long-tailed Tit sighting in Cairngorms National Park on a given day, based on 551 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 38th most-seen of the 140 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January, September and November
In those months about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Long-tailed Tit in Cairngorms National Park on a given day, against about 10% in May and June, the lowest months.
Between 11 am and 2 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Long-tailed Tit sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
11th of 26
Of the 26 parks where we can rate Long-tailed Tit sightings, Cairngorms National Park ranks 11th at about 20%. The best odds are in Nikko National Park (Japan, about 60%), Sierra Nevada National Park (Spain, about 40%) and Aigüestortes National Park (Spain, about 40%). All parks ranked.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Long-tailed Tit that you can see in Cairngorms National Park (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Chaffinch (about 80%), European Robin (about 70%) and Coal Tit (about 70%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Long-tailed Tit is recorded against all the birds logged in Cairngorms National Park (551 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
