Aegithalos caudatus
Silhouette: Matt Wilkins (photo by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.net) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
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 |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Long-tailed Tit sighting in Beijing on a given day, based on 587 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 76th most-seen of the 324 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
November to January
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Long-tailed Tit in Beijing on a given day, against under 5% in March to September, the lowest months. Those are among Beijing's driest months, with about 5 mm of rain a month against 150 mm in July.
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.
55th of 68
Of the 68 cities where we can rate Long-tailed Tit sightings, Beijing ranks 55th at about 10%. The best odds are in Manchester (United Kingdom, about 60%), Turin (Italy, about 60%) and Milan (Italy, about 60%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Long-tailed Tit is recorded against all the birds logged in Beijing (587 verified sightings), 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.
