Parus afer
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The grey tit (Melaniparus afer) is a species of bird in the tit family Paridae. It is found in Lesotho and South Africa. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation.
The grey tit was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the tits in the genus Parus and coined the binomial name Parus afer. Gmelin based his account on the "black-breasted titmouse" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham had examined a specimen from the Cape of Good Hope that formed part of the collection of the naturalist Joseph Banks. The grey tit was moved to the genus Melaniparus based on the results of a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 that found that a group of species formed a distinct clade. The genus Melaniparus had been introduced in 1850 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek melas, melanos "black" and the genus Parus introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. The specific... Wikipedia →
Recording0:55
South Africa · 2017
© Marion Maclean · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0
Recording0:11
South Africa · 2024
© Jean Stephenson · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Coast National Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
More parks will be added in future updates.
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Grey Tit sighting in West Coast National Park on a given day, based on 173 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 106th most-seen of the 192 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May and July
In those months about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Grey Tit in West Coast National Park on a given day, against under 5% in January and June, the lowest months. Those are among West Coast National Park's wettest months, with about 45 mm of rain a month against 5 mm in February.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Grey Tit 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 West Coast National Park, in our data
West Coast National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Grey Tit sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Grey Tit that you can see in West Coast National Park (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Cape Wagtail (about 70%), Cape Bulbul (about 70%) and Karoo Prinia (about 70%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Grey Tit is recorded against all the birds logged in West Coast National Park (173 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.
