Baeolophus ridgwayi
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5%
The juniper titmouse (Baeolophus ridgwayi) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. The American Ornithologists' Union split the plain titmouse into the oak titmouse and the juniper titmouse in 1996, due to distinct differences in song, preferred habitat, and genetic makeup.
The juniper titmouse is a small, gray bird with small tuft or crest. Male and female are visually similar. This titmouse lives year-round primarily in the Great Basin, but is resident from southeastern Oregon and central Colorado south to the eastern Mojave Desert in California and central Arizona, as far as west Texas and extreme northeastern Sonora, Mexico-(the Madrean sky islands). It prefers open woodlands of warm, dry pinyon-juniper, juniper and desert riparian woods.
Juniper titmice will sleep in cavities, dense foliage, or birdhouses. When roosting in foliage, the titmouse chooses a twig surrounded by dense foliage or an accumulation of dead pine needles, simulating a roost in a cavity. It forms pairs or small groups, but does not form large flocks. It may join mixed-species flocks after breeding season for foraging.
The juniper titmouse eats insects and spiders, sometimes seen catching insects in mid air. It also eats berries, acorns, and some seeds, sometimes hammering seeds against branches to open them. The bird forages on foliage, twigs, branches, trunks, and occasionally on the ground. Strong legs and feet allows it to hang upside down to forage. Juniper titmice visit feeders with suet, peanut butter, and seeds.
The song of the juniper titmouse is a rolling series of notes given on the same pitch. Its call sounds like a raspy tschick-adee. This species builds its nest in a woodpecker hole, natural cavity, or nest box, lining it with grass, moss, mud, hair, feathers, and fur. It breeds from March into July, with peak activity in April and May, laying 3–9 eggs, usually 4–7. The female is the primary incubator, the process of which takes 14–16 days. Young are altricial, and are tended by both parents in nest for 16–21 days. Parents continue to tend to young for another three to four weeks after the young leave the nest.
The oak titmouse and juniper titmouse appear almost identical, but differ in voice as well as range. The oak titmouse has a browner back than the juniper titmouse. The oak titmouse gives a repeated series of three to seven syllables, each composed of one low and one high note, while the juniper titmouse song consists of a series of rapid syllables on the same note. Ranges overlap only in a small area in California. Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grand Canyon National Park | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | Zion National Park | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 3 | Guadalupe Mountains National Park | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 4 | Saguaro National Park | 🇺🇸 United States |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salt Lake City | 🇺🇸 United States |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Juniper Titmouse sighting in Salt Lake City on a given day, based on 13 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 192nd most-seen of the 216 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Any time of year
In every month with enough records, under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Juniper Titmouse in Salt Lake City on a given day, so our monthly data shows no clear season.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Juniper Titmouse sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Salt Lake City, in our data
Salt Lake City is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Juniper Titmouse sightings: under 5% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Juniper Titmouse is recorded against all the birds logged in Salt Lake City (13 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.
