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Tiny, acrobatic bird with gray-brown upperparts and
paler underparts. Eyes are dark brown, bill is tiny, and tail is long.
Pacific coast race has brown crown. Rocky Mountain race has gray cap
and brown ear patch. South New Mexico/Texas race has black mask, ear
patch. Weak fluttering flight.
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BUSHTIT
Psaltriparus minimus
PASSERIFORMES
Bushtit (Aegithalidae)
Range
and Habitat
Bushtit: Resident from extreme southwestern British Columbia, southern
Idaho, southwestern Wyoming, and the Oklahoma panhandle southward. The
preferred habitats include coastal forests among second-growth alder
thickets and edges of coniferous forests composed of maple, dogwood,
and birch.
SOUND: "tsip", "pit"
Bushtits travel in flocks of up to 60 birds until
breeding season when they break off into pairs.
The nest is an impressive, woven, hanging basket with a hole high up
on the side of the nest and a passageway to the nest chamber at the
bottom. It can be up to a foot long, and is generally built of spider
webs, moss, lichen,
and other plant material. Both the male and female will incubate the
eggs, sometimes even at the same time.
This bird often has helpers at the nest, birds other than the parental
pair that feed nestlings. All family members sleep together in the complex
nest during breeding, but they leave it after the young fledge, and
sleep on branches.
The Bushtit is a terrestrial bird that is native to the United States,
Guatemala, Mexico and Canada. The range of this bird species is more
than 2 million kilometers.
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