Willow Tit

The willow tit is a small Poecile with a black cap and bib, pale cheeks and grey-brown upperparts. It can be difficult to separate visually from marsh tit, making voice, structure and habitat useful. Molecular work also separated the Sichuan tit, Poecile weigoldicus, from the willow tit complex. Most populations are resident and pairs can remain on territories throughout the year (BTO BirdFacts; general species account).

It favours damp young or regenerating woodland, conifer forest, willow and alder thickets, bog margins and other sites with decaying wood. Pairs excavate or adapt cavities in rotten trunks and stumps, lining them with bark, fibres, hair and feathers. Clutches contain five to nine eggs. The diet is mainly invertebrates and larvae, supplemented by seeds and other plant matter, and food may be cached behind bark, beneath branches or among lichens (BTO BirdFacts; BirdLife species ecology).