Bearded Tit

Bearded tit feeding on seed heads in Winter, Yorkshire, UK. The Male bearded tit is one of our most distinctive and easily recognisable native birds. These shy birds have eluded me many times over the years, so when a friend told me about an unusually confident male I jumped at the chance to photograph it. Here he paused briefly for me in the classic pose on the reed stems.

About the Bearded Tit:

The bearded reedling, also commonly known the bearded tit, is small long tailed bird in the family Panuridae. These distinctive birds are typically seen flying over dense reedbeds. Male bearded tits have a grey head with dark eye stripes that actually look more like a moustache than a beard. Breeding colonies of this wetland specialist are found exclusively in large reed beds by lakes or swamps. During the Summer the birds have an insectivorous diet and during the Winter months they adjust their digestive system to a seed diet by feeding on grit.

The British population currently stands at just 500 pairs and is largely confined to the southern and eastern England with small populations in  Yorkshire and north Lancashire. In Ireland a handful of breeding pairs can only be found in County Wexford. The largest single nationwide population resides ar Perth and Kinross, Scotlandis in the reedbeds at the mouth of the River Tay.

You can find more about bearded tits here.