Crested Tit
This bird’s gruesome feeding habit could be why birders in Britain are only ever likely to see a Crested Tit in pine forests north of the border
You’re only ever likely to see one of these north of the border – find out why...
If anybody considers going to see a Crested Tit in Britain, they will inevitably plan a trip to Scotland. If they live in Scotland, they will focus their attention only on the Caledonian pine forests and plantations of the central north, and nowhere else. Has this ever struck you as odd? It should do. Look at their range map of Europe and you’ll see that Crested Tits are widespread across a central band, right to the coast of northern France. They are commonplace fewer than 300km from London. But try to find one anywhere in England, or Wales or Northern Ireland for that matter, and you will draw a blank. It is as if the Auld Alliance of 1295, when Scotland and France ganged up against England, still finds expression in the distribution of the ‘Crestie.’ There are some claimed records of Crested Tit in the wild in England, but incredibly few, bearing in mind how many sites are well watched these days, and so many rarities are seen. To date, there have been none in the 21st Century at all, and there were only about 10 reports last century, several of which are distinctly dubious. Two very old specimens from the 19th Century have been assigned to continental races, not to the Scottish one. For such an easily identified bird that has bred for millennia on British soil, the lack of sightings of wanderers and vagrants is astonishing. There has never been a large-scale twitch to see a vagrant Crested Tit. The Europeans, as ever, are baffled by Britain. On the continent, the Crested Tit occurs not only in conifer woods, but also in mixed and occasionally pure deciduous stands, and it is by no means rare. In Scotland, it is highly localised, thinly spread and specialised. And in between are hundreds, if not thousands, of woods, comprising perfectly suitable English habitat. To understand a little of why the Crested Tit is not likely to be seen in England any time soon, we need to look at a small snapshot of its life. Imagine that you are birding in a Caledonian pine forest this autumn. If you are, you might witness something rather strange, and definitely brutal. It is of great significance to the Crested Tit’s ecology. Imagine that this small bird is foraging on a tree-trunk, as it often does. Suddenly it is distracted by a movement, and flits across to grasp one of its favourite foods, a leggy spider that had been crawling across the bark (spiders, incidentally, are Crested Tits’ preferred foods to bring to their young and are generally much appreciated by this bird). The predator grabs the prey, and you think that is the end of the episode. However, rather than a quick gulp down, the Crested Tit pecks violently at the spider’s head and bites off several of its legs, not consuming it on the spot. Instead it flies off to a small growth of lichen hanging from a branch higher up, often on the tree next door, and there carefully secretes the immobilised arachnid. To add insult to injury, the bird sometimes uses spider silk to fix the body in place, along with the body fluids of its prey and the predator’s own saliva. Having placed the spider, the Crested Tit then flies away to continue foraging. Watch the bird for a little longer and you might witness equally unpleasant treatment to other small creatures, from caterpillars to flies. Although some are killed, others are similarly incapacitated, often by removing all or part of the head. They are stored away in similar manner, not always in lichen clumps, but also in
crevices in the bark of large trees, or where branches jut out, or even among the needles. Here they are left for varying periods of time, sometimes retrieved after a week or so, sometimes several weeks. Those that aren’t killed presumably stay fresher for longer in storage. We are not accustomed to thinking of tits as predators, but they are, of course. Crested Tits, although looking like diminutive mites to us, will take items as big as small dragonflies. In the autumn, they also turn their attention to consuming conifer seeds, mostly of pine in Scotland. Some seeds they will eat on the spot, but many will be stored away in similar sites to the arachnid grave, every item in its own separate hiding place. Thus, a Crested Tit spends significant time during each autumn day simply finding and storing edible items, for use at some time of need in the future. Perhaps surprisingly, its storing habit doesn’t stop in winter, but will take place, if appropriate, at any time of year. Sometimes an individual will find a cached item during its foraging, and then store it away again somewhere else!
Rediscovering treasure
This is all very well, but by now you should be asking (I hope) what on earth this ecological quirk has to do with the Crested Tit’s non-appearance in England? Well, consider this. If a Crested Tit spends a great deal of time and effort storing away surplus food during times of plenty, to consume when foraging is difficult, or in the dark days of winter, time-pressured, then it is vitally important that the foraging bird is the beneficiary of its own work. There is no point putting away food that it won’t be able to find at a later date or, worse, that can easily be consumed by a different individual. Research has suggested that Crested Tits (in contrast to Willow Tits, for example, which are also ‘scatterhoarders’) don’t remember the location of their caches. Instead they hide them away in places that ensure that they are bound to come across them later on – for example, in the choice location of a patch of lichen. This makes it particularly important that the hard-working bird is best placed to rediscover its treasure. And the only way to ensure this is that the Crested Tit remains on its territory all year round – and ideally, for a lifetime. And indeed, Crested Tits are exceptionally faithful to their home ranges. In Scotland, where individuals or pairs often occupy large areas, they almost never range away from home, except in exceptional circumstances such as prolonged inclement weather. On their home patch, as well as storing away food, they also learn the best sites to forage, the best places to roost and to nest. To a Crested Tit, maintaining its borders and staying put on familiar ground is vital to its survival. There are small windows of opportunity each year, when the young are dispersing away from their parents’ territory, and in January when the breeding territories are being finalised, that a Crested Tit might occasionally wander outside its normal range. There is, for example, a single record of Crested Tit for Africa, when a bird presumably crossed the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain or Portugal. These might account for the sparse English records. In most years, however, the Crested Tit is the epitome of a stay-at-home, sedentary bird. A few millennia ago, a small population was presumably isolated in Scotland by retreating ice. There they have remained, more and more isolated. And there, we can be sure, they will stay.