A lot of birds sing, but titmice also talk
The clearest sign of California spring is the singing of titmice.
It starts early here, as does the season. I often hear the first few tentative attempts in December. In January and February, their voices grow more prominent than any other in the woods. And when March rolls around, it seems like they have at last succeeded through their tireless efforts in awakening the rest of the world, with a host of birds now joining them in song.
The oak titmouse is a little gray songbird topped with a dashing crest. As their name suggests, titmice are most often encountered in California’s oak woodlands. They are relative generalists, however, feeding on a variety of bugs and seeds, and so are often found in neighborhoods with a reasonable quantity of mature or native trees. Titmice come readily to both feeders and birdhouses.
Titmice are in the minority of songbirds that form lifelong pairs and maintain a territory with their partner throughout the year. This means you’ll typically encounter not just one titmouse, but two, staying constantly in touch with distinctively scratchy calls.
Despite their plainness, many people have a great fondness for these birds. Bright colors are pretty, but you get more personality from a pointy crest, or mohawk, as a suggestive number of ordinary, non-birder people describe this feature to me. Mohawks give a sense of spunky, assertive free-spiritedness quite distinct from those conformist flocks of finches and sparrows, not that I don’t love them, too.
But what I like best about titmice are their voices. For everyday conversation, there are few birds finer. Titmice are in the minority of songbirds that form lifelong pairs and maintain a
territory with their partner throughout the year. This means you’ll typically encounter not just one titmouse, but two, staying constantly in touch with distinctively scratchy calls. Like their relatives the chickadees, titmice form their speech from combinations of prefatory faster high notes followed by emphatic raspy ones. “Chick-a-dee” is one onomatopoeic pattern. From titmice I hear lots of “seejert, see-jert,” “see-seejert” and combative “jertjert-jert-jert”
I simply enjoy this sound. “Scratchy” doesn’t really do it justice. While clearer, whistled voices may sound abstractly nice and musical, they are also rather boring and untextured. Titmouse conversation reminds me of the famously distinctive voice of the 1930s actress Jean Arthur,
described by critic Gerald Weales as “a cross between sandpaper and a caress.” People aren’t drawn so much to pure operatic sopranos as to homey, expressive conversation. Lots of birds sing, but titmice also talk.
Which is not to say they
don’t sing, and sing well. Classic titmouse song is a series of simple, twopitched phrases with a high note and a low note: “teewhee-teewhee-teewhee.” It’s not unusual to hear one-pitch versions as well: “wheet-wheet-wheetwheet-wheet.”
There are generally considered to be two functions to birdsong: mate attraction and declaration of territory to other males. In titmice, the latter is much more important, since they typically find their mate in the non-singing autumn
after they are born and then stick with them for life. You can hear this function of territorial announcement with unusual clarity in the well-spaced and belligerent titmice, which often engage in obvious call-and-response countersinging.
One male sings near a border and then a neighbor responds. The second bird will often reply by repeating the specific pattern of the first bird’s song, and then they might trade several variations, often with some degree of matching. The general theory is that repeating your rival’s song makes your statement a more directly challenging one. I think this is a familiar enough phenomenon, like any clichéd confrontation of tough guys following a “yeah?” — ”yeah!” dynamic of upward-ratcheting tension. To put this also in old Hollywood terms, because that is fun, it’s basically as if the first titmouse is Basil Rathbone saying, “You’ll not take her while I live!” and the second titmouse is Errol Flynn responding with, “Then I’ll take her when you’re dead!” Repeat that dialogue the next time you encounter two tiny crested birds singing at each other.
In truth, mortal combat is uncommon between titmice. The contrast between their uncontainable assertiveness and unthreatening form is perhaps at the heart of their appeal. In the sandpaper of the titmouse calls, there is a friction you can hold on to. And in the clear ringing of their songs you’ll hear spring burst forth like flowers from winter’s silent soil.