The Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) is a small, lively songbird that has captured the hearts of many bird enthusiasts across eastern North America. With its distinctive gray crest, large black eyes, and inquisitive personality, this bird is a frequent visitor to backyard feeders and a delight to watch in the wild. Many backyard birdwatchers confuse the Tufted Titmouse with other small gray songbirds. This common year-round resident of the deciduous and mixed forests of eastern North America is also found in older urban and suburban areas with mature trees and vegetation. The Tufted Titmouse's gray-crested head, rust-colored flanks, black forehead and large eyes make it easily identifiable, even for casual birders. Whether it’s the crisp whistle on a frosty morning or the quick flash of a gray crest at your feeder, the Tufted Titmouse brings life, color, and personality to any backyard.
Identification
A little gray bird with an echoing voice, the Tufted Titmouse is common in eastern deciduous forests and a frequent visitor to feeders. The large black eyes, small, round bill, and brushy crest gives these birds a quiet but eager expression that matches the way they flit through canopies, hang from twig-ends, and drop in to bird feeders.
Habitat and Behavior
Tufted Titmice live in deciduous woods or mixed evergreen-deciduous woods, typically in areas with a dense canopy and many tree species. They are also common in orchards, parks, and suburban areas. Generally found at low elevations, Tufted Titmice are rarely reported at elevations above 2,000 feet.
Look for Tufted Titmice flitting through the outer branches of tree canopies in deciduous woods, parks, and backyards. You’ll often hear the high, whistled peter-peter-peter song well before you see the bird.
This is an active bird, moving along branches, and often searching under them, for arthropods. Tufted Titmice and chickadees are ‘nuclear' species, often joined in winter flocks by a variety of ‘satellite' species. As a ‘nuclear' species, titmice influence the paths that flocks follow, are aggressive mobbers of potential predators, and often take the lead during mobbing events.
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Tufted Titmice flit from branch to branch of the forest canopy looking for food, often in the company of other species including nuthatches, chickadees, kinglets, and woodpeckers. These acrobatic foragers often hang upside down or sideways as they investigate cones, undersides of branches, and leaf clusters. They sometimes come all the way to the ground to hop around after fallen seeds or insects. Titmice are very vocal birds and are also quick to respond to the sounds of agitation in other birds, coming close to investigate or joining a group of birds mobbing a predator.
Pairs may remain together all year, joining small flocks with other titmice in winter. Flocks break up in late winter, and pairs establish nesting territories. Male feeds female often from courtship stage until after eggs hatch. Breeding pair may have a "helper," one of their offspring from the previous year.
Diet and Foraging Habits
Like their close relatives the chickadees, titmice are omnivores. Tufted Titmice enjoy a diet of insects and seeds. These birds prey on bugs and insect eggs during the summer months, but in the winter, they rely on feeders, berries, nuts, and fruit.
Tufted Titmice eat mainly insects in the summer, including caterpillars, beetles, ants and wasps, stink bugs, and treehoppers, as well as spiders and snails. Insects make up close to two-thirds of annual diet, with caterpillars the most important prey in summer; also eats wasps, bees, sawfly larvae, beetles, true bugs, scale insects, and many others, including many insect eggs and pupae. Also eats some spiders, snails. Seeds, nuts, berries, and small fruits are important in diet especially in winter. Tufted Titmice also eat seeds, nuts, and berries, including acorns and beech nuts.
Forages by hopping actively among branches and twigs of trees, often hanging upside down, sometimes hovering momentarily. Often drops to the ground for food as well. Comes to bird feeders for seeds or suet. Opens acorns and seeds by holding them with feet and pounding with bill.
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Over the course of a year, about 2/3 of a titmouse’s diet is animal matter, including insects, spiders, snails and, at feeders, suet. The rest of their diet is plant matter, such as seeds, nuts, and berries. They carry seeds off one at a time to a safe perch. They hold one seed in their feet and peck at it to open and eat it, or to tuck it away to eat later.
Experiments with Tufted Titmice indicate they always choose the largest seeds they can when foraging. When a titmouse finds a large seed, you’ll see it carry the prize to a perch and crack it with sharp whacks of its stout bill.
Food Caching Behavior
To survive cold winters without traveling south, titmice hoard food during the fall and winter months. Tufted Titmice often store food in tree bark crevices or leaf litter, returning later to retrieve it. Titmice cache, or hoard, extra food to eat when food is harder to find. Usually they remove the shells before hoarding seeds. Will store food items, retrieving them later.
Attracting Tufted Titmice to Your Yard
Tufted Titmouse are regulars at backyard bird feeders, especially in winter. They prefer sunflower seeds but will eat suet, peanuts, and other seeds as well. Beyond sunflower seeds, other feeder foods for titmice are mealworms, Nyjer®, peanuts, safflower and suet. You might even try offering blueberries from a tray feeder on winter mornings.
Strategically pick your bird feeders based on the birds you want to see. Some feeders are meant to stand up to winter weather, while others are seed-specific like suet holders. Using a variety of feeders allows more space for birds to visit your yard. Tufted titmice will be visiting feeders in the winter when there is snow build up and in the summer when there’s chance of rain, so remember to keep the seed fresh if exposed to moisture.
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As tufted titmice discover your backyard bird feeders, make sure your yard is an inviting space they will want to make their home. Running water is always a great way to provide for the birds all year long. Looking to attract a variety of birds to your yard? Use the Single Seed Attraction Chart on the back of Kaytee wild bird seed products.
To keep these birds coming back to your yard, make sure not to remove the insects they commonly feast on like wasps, bees, spiders, snails, and beetles.
Nesting Habits
Tufted Titmice nest in cavities made by other species, primarily woodpeckers, but will nest in boxes. Tufted Titmouse build their nests in cavities, so putting up nest boxes is a good way to attract breeding titmice to your yard. Make sure you put it up well before breeding season. Attach a guard to keep predators from raiding eggs and young. You'll find plans for building a nest box for Tufted Titmouse.
Nest site is in hole in tree, either natural cavity or old woodpecker hole; averages about 35' above the ground, ranging from 3' to 90' up. Unlike the chickadees, apparently does not excavate its own nest hole. Will also use nest boxes. Nest (probably built by female) has foundation of grass, moss, leaves, bark strips, lined with soft materials, especially animal hair.
Nest Placement: Tufted Titmice nest in cavities but aren’t able to excavate them on their own. They use natural holes and old nest holes made by several woodpecker species, including large species such as Pileated Woodpecker and Northern Flicker. Additionally, Tufted Titmice also nest in artificial structures including nest boxes, fenceposts, and metal pipes.
Nest Description: Titmice build cup-shaped nests inside the nest cavity using damp leaves, moss and grasses, and bark strips. They line this cup with soft materials such as hair, fur, wool, and cotton, sometimes plucking hairs directly from living mammals. Naturalists examining old nests have identified raccoon, opossum, dog, fox squirrel, red squirrel, rabbit, horse, cow, cat, mouse, woodchuck, and even human hair in titmouse nests. Nest construction takes 6 to 11 days.
How do they get fur? A birder in Ithaca, New York, once noticed a raccoon’s tail sticking out of a huge cavity in a big tree where the raccoon was sleeping. A titmouse alighted on the tail, plucked out a beak full of fur, and flew off to its nest. A few minutes later, the titmouse returned, landed on the tail again, and plucked more fur. The raccoon apparently rolled over inside the tree, its tail twirling around as the titmouse held fast. The same birder also watched another titmouse pulling fur off of a dead squirrel in the middle of a busy road. People who brush their dogs or cats can make titmouse lives easier by putting clumps of fur into a clean suet feeder. In spring, titmice will pull out some of the fur for their nests.
Nesting Facts:
- Clutch Size: 5-6, sometimes 3-9.
- Egg Description: White, finely dotted with brown, reddish, or purple.
- Incubation: Lasts 12-14 days, with the female incubating while the male provides food. Incubation is by female only, 12-14 days.
- Female stays with young much of time at first, while male brings food; later, young are fed by both parents, sometimes by additional helper.
- Young leave nest about 15-16 days after hatching.
- Egg Length: 0.7-0.8 in (1.7-2 cm)
- Egg Width: 0.6-0.6 in (1.4-1.6 cm)
- Number of Broods: 1 brood
- Nestling Period: 15-16 days
- Condition at Hatching: Almost entirely naked and pink, with tufts of down on head and along spine, eyes closed.
Social Behavior
In midwinter, titmice spend most of the day in small family groups consisting of a mated pair and one or more of the young they raised the previous summer. When mixed flocks of chickadees, nuthatches, and other small birds pass through the territory, the titmice often join them. In spring, most of the previous year’s young disperse, but some remain with their parents to help them raise a new family. Even though they’re so sociable by day, titmice are solitary by night, each sleeping in its own cavity. When winter is over, titmice find a new hole to build a nest in because they don’t make a nest in the holes they use for sleeping.
Pair bonds often last for more than one breeding season and, in contrast to most species of titmice and chickadees, young Tufted Titmice often remain with their parents during the winter and then disperse later in their second year.
Conservation Status
Tufted Titmice are common, and populations have increased between 1966 and 2019, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of 12 million and rates the species 7 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of low conservation concern. Their range has been expanding northward over the last half-century. During the past 70 years, the range of this species has expanded northward into New England and southern Canada, with climatic warming likely the most important factor, but bird feeders also a factor.