Black capped chickadees

[Steve1701D]

One of my favorite part of the outdoors is birdwatching.
I was bumming around at my parent's place the other day, took a few knife pics and saw this little fella buzzing around. Very hard to get the darn thing to sit still long enough for a picture. I took several, but only these two turned out any good. We have plenty of these in our area, very cheery little guys.

 

[Tekeeler]

He looks like a merry chappie. As soon as I saw your picture I thought of our long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatis ) a little pink and brown bundle of fluff and energy. Very nice pics you have taken and I like the name too.

Aegithalos caudatis

 

[Toddy]

Nice photos.
I've just been watching a little group of seven of them tumbling into my garden and flitting on and off the fat balls hanging in the rowan. They're bonnie wee things, I've never been quick enough with the camera to catch them though. When all of the leaves are out it's even harder to catch more than a glimpse of them. The deserve a better name than "Long-tailed Tit"; surely they must have other names? Anyone know?? I've got reed warblers visiting too, they've come up from the burn looking for spilled seed from the feeders. Saw a buzzard last week
We've an acquaintance who has commercial woodlands that are awash with deer, and he hoped that the group of Spaniards who'd paid to shoot through it would take out some of them. Instead they shot every little bird in the place; blackbirds, bluetits, even the robins and wrens They said they were a delicacy. Miserable sods.

Toddy

 

[innocent bystander]

There's some cute names here :

http://www.cjvlang.com/Birds/longtailtit.html

Also called bottle tit 'cos of the nest shape :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/wildbritain/thismonth/highlights.shtml

 

[Fenlander]

One of my favorite part of the outdoors is birdwatching.
I was bumming around at my parent's place the other day, took a few knife pics and saw this little fella buzzing around. Very hard to get the darn thing to sit still long enough for a picture. I took several, but only these two turned out any good. We have plenty of these in our area, very cheery little guys.

In the UK we call this bird "Willow Tit" Parus montanus. A species thta has declined drematically in the past few years and we are not sure why?

Great pictures by the way!

 

[Fenlander]

Nice photos.
I've just been watching a little group of seven of them tumbling into my garden and flitting on and off the fat balls hanging in the rowan. They're bonnie wee things, I've never been quick enough with the camera to catch them though. When all of the leaves are out it's even harder to catch more than a glimpse of them. The deserve a better name than "Long-tailed Tit"; surely they must have other names? Anyone know?? I've got reed warblers visiting too, they've come up from the burn looking for spilled seed from the feeders. Saw a buzzard last week
We've an acquaintance who has commercial woodlands that are awash with deer, and he hoped that the group of Spaniards who'd paid to shoot through it would take out some of them. Instead they shot every little bird in the place; blackbirds, bluetits, even the robins and wrens They said they were a delicacy. Miserable sods.

Toddy

"I've got reed warblers visiting too, they've come up from the burn looking for spilled seed from the feeders"

Reed Warblers feed on insects and migrate to Africa for the winter.....do you mean "Reed Bunting"? Feeds on seeds and will visit gardens during colder weather.

 

[tomtom]

nice pictures mate!

does chickadee mean 'little small' or 'big small' or have i got the wrong word?

 

[Toddy]

"I've got reed warblers visiting too, they've come up from the burn looking for spilled seed from the feeders"

Reed Warblers feed on insects and migrate to Africa for the winter.....do you mean "Reed Bunting"? Feeds on seeds and will visit gardens during colder weather.

Ooops sorry, you're quite right. The warbler is the one like a streamlined pale sparrow, isn't it?
Cheers,
Toddy

 

[Steve1701D]

nice pictures mate!

does chickadee mean 'little small' or 'big small' or have i got the wrong word?

Chickadee refers to the sound they make: "chick-a-dee-dee-dee"

According to my Peterson's guide, they're in the same family, Paridae, as titmice.

 

[Tantalus]

OK someone help me out here

this thread got me well confused so i read up some and got even confuseder

is everyone talking about different birds here?

the pics are from the US, the bird is called a chickadee and makes a noise just like that

also i dimly remember someone telling me chickadees are quite friendly little things, and can even be hand fed sometimes

now i am not an expert on birds but i dont think i have come across this in the UK . Neither the noise it makes nor the friendliness

to further confuse me people then jumble latin names and english ones and i ended up completely lost

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp, is there an ornithologist in the house?

Tant

 

[Justin Time]

The picture does show that it's a member of the same family as our Tits and the resemblance is strong with with Willow and Marsh Tits.( Parus montanus and Parus palustris) but it is a different bird
A quick google brought up lots of info such as the Chickadee web . The Scientific names are supposed to help cut out confusion by suplementing local names but it would appear that some naming committee has made things worse by changing this from Parus atricapillus to Poecile atricapillus No doubt Hoodoo will have more info on that.

I've just found out that what we call a Firecrest also lives in North America but get's called Golden-crowned Kinglet, our Wren; their Winter Wren, etc etc

 

[Tantalus]

yeah i got as far as Poecile being a sub group of Parus but i think my brain blew a gasket at that point

further confused by the fact that all the european sites had european maps, and american sites had ................

wait for it .......

american maps

but i couldnt find maps that showed both together for the same birds

yes i totally agree they are similar and probably closely related, it was the "friendliness" thing that really sparked my curiosity

Tant

 

[Hoodoo]

That little fellow is Poecile atricapilla, the black-capped chickadee.

Hmmm...you guys already knew that. LOL! In the 1988 book, The Birders Handbook, the genus was listed as Parus, so the change has been since then. Much of the recent taxonomic changes for all species have been driven by DNA studies. Now that we can compare species at the molecular level, all kinds of changes are underway and will continue so for many years to come. My guess is that the genus Parus was seen as being polyphyletic, which is unacceptable to most cladists out there today.

Hope that clears things up.

 

[Steve1701D]

My guess is that the genus Parus was seen as being polyphyletic, which is unacceptable to most cladists out there today.
Hope that clears things up.

polyphyletic
Hmmm, can you translate that into english, Hoodoo, or at least into Hoosier?

 

[Fenlander]

Apologies for my error. I was taught in my early years of birding that they were one and the same (pays to always check what your old I guess)!

This link may help to clarify thing?

http://www.answers.com/topic/titmouse

 

[Justin Time]

Is a cladist the opposite of a nudist?

 

[Hoodoo]

polyphyletic
Hmmm, can you translate that into english, Hoodoo, or at least into Hoosier?

Well, this is real geek stuff, I admit. It's a bit hard to explain in a simple way without using diagrams and such. But I will give it a try and the nice thing about the internet is that you don't have to read it. So if you find this kind of stuff boring, just skip to the next thread.

Firstly, let me say that WARS in scientific journals have been fought over this stuff. Major battles. It's been going on for years and years, but I can say that in general, the cladists have pretty much won.

What does that mean? It means that taxanomic groups (taxons = domain, kingdom, phylum, class order, family, genus species) are now expected to be monophyletic.

What does that mean?

It means that all members of a particular taxon share a common ancestor. All members of a taxon are derived from a single ancestral species that gave rise to no species in any other taxa.

In a polyphyletic group, there is more than one ancestral species and from a cladist's point of view, polyphyletic groups need to be broken down so that the resulting taxa are all monophyletic. They got a thing about this.

So for instance, if you look at recent textbooks in biology, you will rarely find 4 or 5 or 6 kingdom systems any more. We are now seeing 20 or 30 or more kingdoms (lots more, actually) being described. Above that, we now have three domains, all supposed to be monophyletic. The Bacteria, the Archaea, and the Eukarya. I think I better stop there. Gotta write a quiz.

 

[Steve1701D]

I get it now, for the most part. I'm going to have to use that word at work this week

 

[leon-1]

To me it just sounds like subspecies are being given seperate groupings due to the fact that they may have evolved slightly differently due to thier habitats and locations.

When examined at a genetic level this would be evident, but in appearance they may seem very similair and thier ancestry would be easy enough to work out.

 

[Hoodoo]

To me it just sounds like subspecies are being given seperate groupings due to the fact that they may have evolved slightly differently due to thier habitats and locations.

When examined at a genetic level this would be evident, but in appearance they may seem very similair and thier ancestry would be easy enough to work out.

That's mostly true at the species level but the monophyly rule applies to every taxon. So phyla, classes, and orders for instance, are expected to be monophyletic.