Petro Hryniuk
Member
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Tit ID - Ukraine (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Petro Hryniuk
- Start date
It looks like a Willow Tit indeed (they can, apparently, have such a face pattern as above). Also, only Willow Tit is said to show buffy flanks (assuming the colours are true to life). I think it would be best to try to get a sound recording (both species shouldn't be very mobile).
Last edited:
PaulCountyDurham
Well-known member
I reckon the bird is a Marsh Tit.
It was posted on this site a while back that the most foolproof guide (although not entirely foolproof) is the whitish mark at the base of the upper mandible which I think is evident in the picture.
There are other differentiating features such as cap and bib, which again I think reflects a Marsh Tit in your picture, and another feature which seems to hold true to me is that Marsh Tits look like very smart birds, like the one in your picture. I went through a spell of taking quite a few pictures of both, mainly Marsh Tits, and when I did finally take a few decent pictures of Willow Tits and compared the pictures, I thought the Marsh Tit was a much smarter looking bird (like the one in your picture).
Marsh is very sedentary, but Willow is both mobile and highly migratory (eg. it was the fourth most commonly caught bird at a coastal migration site this last autumn, over 7200)
I don't believe in objectively judging this feature in variant lighting conditions, and is a photo in the paper (fig. 2) in which a Willow Tit appears to show it. That is not to say it couldn't be a Marsh Tit, and might very well be. Bib size and cap gloss are not said to be reliable (along with the buffy flanks I mentioned above myself).
EDIT: ID help - Dachau, Germany - II
EDIT: ID help - Dachau, Germany - II
PaulCountyDurham
Well-known member
The only other point I'd make is that I remember having dozens of pictures and analysing them, and to my untutored eye I thought I could see differences in these birds, e.g. cap, bib etc. In retrospect, it was simply the angle of how the birds were perched and they were all Marsh Tits.
When I did get my camera on a Willow Tit, it stood out as a different bird to those I'd previously analysed even when looking through the lens at say 15 metres. Shape, smartness seemed to mark this bird out as different. I appreciate that would not remotely pass as scientific evaluation of the differences between these two birds and relies more on intuition and superficial observance.
Either way, the OP will only get his/her definitive answer when one of the experts comments.
kb57
Well-known member
I think we need to bear in mind the variability of both species across their range, and the fact that they generally get progressively paler as you go east. I'm not sure where the subspecific boundaries lie, and as Jos says, if we're talking willow tit there could well be some mixing in winter of migrating birds. So in western Ukraine we're looking at possibly willow tit ssp. borealis or possibly uralensis - or marsh tit ssp. stagnatalis.
The neat bib illustrated here looks like a clear marsh tit feature, but coupled with the extensive white wing panel looks a good match for the photograph of willow tit ssp. borealis in the Europe's Birds field guide. Like @PaulCountyDurham I mostly have experience of willow tits in Co. Durham and Tyneside (plus some very different, very pale but no less confusing birds in Hokkaido), of the British ssp. kleinschmidti, and they typically have quite large, diffuse bibs that are certainly not as neat as a marsh tit.
The pale base to the upper mandible is of course a confounding feature which I agree points strongly towards marsh tit - as Paul says, we await an expert opinion...
The neat bib illustrated here looks like a clear marsh tit feature, but coupled with the extensive white wing panel looks a good match for the photograph of willow tit ssp. borealis in the Europe's Birds field guide. Like @PaulCountyDurham I mostly have experience of willow tits in Co. Durham and Tyneside (plus some very different, very pale but no less confusing birds in Hokkaido), of the British ssp. kleinschmidti, and they typically have quite large, diffuse bibs that are certainly not as neat as a marsh tit.
The pale base to the upper mandible is of course a confounding feature which I agree points strongly towards marsh tit - as Paul says, we await an expert opinion...
Bib, bill spot, extent of wing panel...all okay for Marsh Tit.
However a slightly splaying bin as in this individual is also quite common in Willow, and it is questionable if the bill spot is actually a reality and not just light shining off bill. Cheek in second image looks more Willow 🙂
However a slightly splaying bin as in this individual is also quite common in Willow, and it is questionable if the bill spot is actually a reality and not just light shining off bill. Cheek in second image looks more Willow 🙂
kb57
Well-known member
And I guess this would be the same subspecies you have in Lithuania (stagnatilis?)?
