One of the most common birds from the tit family is the brown-headed chickadee or puffy tit. The bird got its second name due to the fact that during cold weather it fluffs up its feathers very much. IN last years Zoologists are inclined to believe that birds should be classified as a separate family - chickadees.
Brown-headed tit on a mushroom. 
Brown-headed Chickadee on a sunflower. 
Geography of residence
Brown-headed chickadees are inhabitants of Europe and Asia, they are distributed in the Eurasian forest zone to the Pacific coast and Japanese Islands. In the north, these birds can be found on the Scandinavian Peninsula and Finland in the south on the outskirts of the Alps and the Balkan Mountains; beyond the mainland, birds live on the islands of Great Britain, Sakhalin, Hokkaido, and Honshu.
The puffball leads both a sedentary and migratory lifestyle. It is quite difficult to meet these birds near human habitation, usually their habitat is coniferous and mixed forests of mountains and plains, usually these are wetlands of the forest, they also live in thickets of willow and alder, the main condition is a large number of rotten or dead trees in which you can build nests. In the mountains, drill chickadees live at altitudes up to 3800 meters above sea level.
The black-capped chickadee is a small bird from the tit family that lives in North America. 
Appearance
The photo shows that brown-headed chickadees have a dense build, they have a large head and a short neck. Their body length does not exceed 14 cm, and their weight is only 8-15 grams. Their plumage is rather inconspicuous - brown-gray in color. On the top and back of the head the feathers are matte black, the plumage of most of the back, shoulders and lower back is brownish-gray. On the sides of the neck the plumage is whitish with an ocher tint. The beak is dark brown, the legs are dark gray. There is no sexual dimorphism.
Nutrition and behavior
However, puffballs can eat plant foods, usually these are:
- Seeds of Christmas tree, cedar and yew,
- wheat,
- hop,
- hemp,
- corn,
- oats,
- barley,
- rowan berries, cranberries, blueberries, etc.
These birds are very suspicious of people, so they do not approach human feeders, even when they are very hungry.
Throughout the year, the chickadee actively stores for the winter; to do this, it hides prey in crevices of tree bark, under lichens and mosses, and sometimes hides reserves several times.
Brown-headed tit, in autumn they usually join with tits, blue tits, and coal tits in mixed flocks. 
The brown-headed chickadee or puffy chickadee has fluffed up. 
Reproduction
Brown-headed chickadees are monogamous birds; having created a pair, they do not part until the death of one of the partners. The breeding season begins at the end of April, only the female is involved in the construction of the nest, usually it takes her up to three weeks, nests are made in rotten tree trunks or dead stumps, at a height of up to three meters above the ground, sometimes she uses old woodpecker hollows or nests as nests. protein. The inside of the hollow is trimmed with pieces of bark, feathers, and birch bark.
The clutch usually contains 5-9 old eggs with brown-red spots. While the eggs are incubating, the male is responsible for feeding the female, and after two weeks the chicks are born. If you look at the photo of the chicks, you can see that for the first three days after birth they are covered with brownish-gray down on their head and back. Both parents are responsible for feeding newborns, flying out for prey up to 300 times a day. After 20 days, the chicks begin to fly, but their parents will feed them for about two more weeks.
The average lifespan of brown-headed nuts is two to three years, and the maximum is up to 9 years.
In winter, there is a strict hierarchy in a flock of birds - females are subordinate to males, and young pairs are subordinate to older ones.
The chickadee (brown-headed chickadee) eats burdock seeds. 
The chickadee (brown-headed chickadee) is swollen. 
Chickadee (brown-headed tit) on a branch. 
More types of tits.
The brown-headed tit is one of the most common birds in Russia. Among all tits, it is the second most numerous after, and in central Siberia, where coniferous forests predominate, it is found more often than any other birds of this family. Unlike other tits, it does not like to live near people and flies to feeders only in situations of acute food shortage. Therefore, despite its numbers, people rarely encounter these birds.
Official name: Brown-headed tit, or chickadee, in Latin Poecile montanus, also called Parus montanus, English name Willow tit. This bird is called a fluffy bird because of its habit of fluffing up its plumage very much during the cold season.
Description of the brown-headed chickadee
The puffy bird is a small bird, smaller than a great tit or sparrow, slightly larger. The average length of the Brown-headed Chickadee is about 13 centimeters, the weight is about 10 grams, the wingspan is 20 cm. Females are almost no different in appearance from males. Unlike the Great Tit and appearance The brown-headed chickadee is quite dull and inconspicuous. Directly from the eyes, a matte black, and not brown, as one might think from the name of the bird, contrasting cap begins, passing through the back of the head and ending on the back. Because of this, the head of the chubby appears disproportionately large. Young birds have a duller cap. The back, tail and wings are approximately the same brownish-gray color, only the back is slightly lighter. The tail is sharply rounded. The sides of the head and cheeks are pure white and contrast sharply with the cap. The sides of the neck and bottom of the bird are whitish with a creamy tint, the beak is small, dark brown, almost black, under the beak there is a black spot with blurred edges. Legs are grey.
Externally, the Brown-headed Chickadee is very similar to the Black-headed Chickadee, but natural conditions It is very difficult to distinguish them, but it is possible. The puffy has a matte cap, and black-headed chickadee- shiny with a metallic tint. Black spot under the beak (bib) The brown-headed chickadee is larger and more like a triangle than an oval, the cheeks are whiter and larger in area. The most noticeable distinguishing feature of the feather feather is the light edges of the secondary flight feathers, which form a contrasting light field on the dark wing.
Like all tits, the Brown-headed Chickadee is a songbird, but its repertoire is not very diverse. There are three types of songs: territorial (usually performed by males to camouflage the nest), demonstrative (performed by both sexes to find a partner), courting (performed by males during courtship with a female).
Powderfish habitats
Found throughout Eurasia east of central France and Great Britain and as far as the Japanese Islands. In the north, its range is limited by the boundaries of forests, on the Scandinavian Peninsula it is also found in the forest-tundra, and in the south by the border of forest-steppes and steppes. It is found in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Ukraine up to the southern foothills of the Carpathians.
The brown-headed chickadee is not afraid of people and shows curiosity towards them, but does not like to settle next to them. It lives in lowland and mountain forests, in which coniferous trees are found: spruce, pine, larch. In the European part of the country, it settles in floodplains, groves, bushes, and can often be found in wetlands of forests. In Siberia it inhabits continuous dark coniferous taiga and swamps, and closer to the south it inhabits cedar plantings. In the mountains, the habitat boundary is the boundaries of tree vegetation.
The brown-headed tit is a sedentary bird, sometimes migrating over short distances. The puffy bird forms stable pairs in the fall, the birds are monogamous, and pairs remain until the death of one of the partners. Males first look for a companion in the nearest territory, within a radius of no more than 5 kilometers, but if unsuccessful, they go to other parts of the forest. In the spring, the pair jointly hollows out a hollow for a nest; unlike other tits, the chickadee, like a woodpecker, does this on its own, and does not occupy ready-made premises.
The small beak of the brown-headed chickadee imposes restrictions on the tree species in which they can find shelter. Birds build nests in stumps, dead or rotten trees, usually birch, aspen, alder, larch at a height of no more than 3 meters from the ground. The careful puffy never leaves chips from construction under a tree, but carries them to another part of the forest. The nest is built exclusively by the female. It takes them an average of one to two weeks to build a house. To do this, birds use branches, tree bark, birch bark, wool and feathers. The nests of chickadees differ from the homes of other species of chickadees in that they do not bring moss into their home. Before starting masonry, there is a break of about a week in construction. Nest construction resumes after the female lays her first egg. The bird continues to bring to the nest soft material, so that after laying is completed, the eggs are covered with soft bedding.
Reproduction and nutrition
As a rule, laying occurs once a year, in early May, and usually contains 5-9 white eggs covered with red-brown specks. The female sits on the eggs for about two weeks. All this time, the male guards the territory and brings food to the female, on average flying to her 200-300 times a day. Occasionally, females take off from the nest and provide themselves with food on their own. The chicks hatch within two to three days. At first they are covered with sparse brownish-gray down, the beak cavity has a brownish-yellow tint.
The female and the male jointly feed the young. At night and on cold days, the brown-headed chickadee returns to the nest with the chicks and sits inseparably with the chicks, warming their offspring. The chicks begin to fly away from the nest 17–20 days after birth, but they still remain dependent on their parents, since they are not able to obtain food on their own. In mid-July, bird families gather in nomadic flocks, in which, in addition to tits, you can find pikas, wrens and nuthatches. Throughout its life, the bird stays within the same area, rarely moving more than 5 km from its place of birth.
In its diet it prefers animal food, consisting of insects. In summer, its diet consists of half animal food, but in autumn and winter seeds occupy most of the food supply. However, in the fall, before the snow falls, the puffer takes the opportunity to find dormant larvae and other invertebrates. The chicks are fed exclusively with animal food. It feeds in the lower layer of the forest and undergrowth, but rarely falls to the ground. You can often see the puffball hanging head down on a very thin branch, trying to catch some insects. It actively makes reserves throughout the year, hiding seeds in crevices of the bark, between the needles, and under lichens.
Live in wildlife Brown-headed tits are no more than 9 years old; in captivity they sometimes live up to 11 years.
Pairs of these tits show amazing attachment to certain areas of the forest with an area of 10-20 hectares. Their whole life takes place in this limited territory, which they can cross in a matter of minutes. But they remember every tree here very well, they know where to find food, a place to sleep, silt and nests. Every day, flying from tree to tree, they slowly move around their area in search of food, walking a winding path of 3-5 kilometers.
Brown-headed chickadees have two songs, completely different from each other. The so-called whistling song is a series of loud, beautiful whistles: “tiu-tiu-tiu-tiu.” Each bird uses several of its variations, differing in height and tempo of execution. This song can be heard already in the first sunny days of winter, at the end of December. But most of all it attracts attention in March, when there are still few other singing birds. Together with bullfinches, pikas, kinglets and great tits, puffy birds create the sound background of a forest that has just awakened in spring.
The second chubby song - gurgling - is quite quiet and consists of alternating trills: “si-sisi-sisisi-tyur-r-lyu-lyu-lyu...” Not only male plumes sing, but also females. The whistling song is most often used to attract a female and maintain communication between partners. The gurgle serves as a sign that the individual has a territory and is going to nest here. Males sing a special quiet version of the gurgling song when courting females.
When the forest is filled with the noise of spring streams, and flowers bloom on their banks yellow flowers coltsfoot, puffy ducks begin to look for a place for a nest. Like all tits, they nest in hollows. However, unlike other European tits, plume tits, as well as tufted tits, prefer to hollow out the hollow themselves. Living trunks are too strong for their small beaks. Therefore, they choose stumps and dead trees with soft, rotten wood for hollows. The male and female take turns flying up to the tree and quickly nipping at the rotten wood. Having collected as many pieces as possible into its beak, one bird flies off to the side, and another bird takes its place without hesitation. When making a hollow, puffballs do not throw wood chips directly under it - after all, those chips, brightly whitening on the forest floor, can give away the location of the nest. They fly away with pieces of wood and often not just throw them away, but hide them between the needles, behind the loose bark, in holes where the knots have fallen out.
The shape of the finished hollow is variable and depends on the location of the soft and hard areas of the wood. And when strong twigs force the chubby ones to make a very intricate move into the hollow. Most often, the depth of the hollow is 14-16, and the diameter of the bottom is 7-8 centimeters. The nests of brown-headed chickadees differ well from the nests of other tits - they have no moss. This is a rather careless lining of strips of juniper bast, aspen, hazel, pine bark scales, wool and feathers. Like all tits, the nest is built by the female alone, and the male accompanies her on flights to collect building material.
Along with woodpeckers, puffy woodpeckers are suppliers of hollows for other small birds - cavity nesters, since they make a new hollow every year. They are especially often occupied by pied flycatchers. Sometimes they unceremoniously expel the chicks even from new hollows, forcing them to abandon eggs or small chicks.
Chickadees begin laying eggs later than other tits, in early May. The female spends the night in the nest, where the male accompanies her every evening. In the morning he flies up to the hollow again and calls his girlfriend with a quiet song. Every morning, before leaving the nest, the female lays one white egg with brown specks. The birds spend the whole day together. The female often begs for food from the male, at this moment reminiscent of a fledgling chick asking for food. And she screams like a chick: “si-ti-zhe.” The male from time to time gives her the food he finds, which is very important for the female during the period of intensive development of her eggs, each of which weighs about 1.2 grams and is approximately a tenth of the body weight of an adult bird. In the first half of the day, the female returns to the nest several times, bringing tufts of wool and dry blades of grass to cover the unfinished clutch.
The first two days after the birth of the offspring, the female spends most of the day in the hollow, warming the almost naked babies with sparse fluff on the head, shoulders and back. There are usually seven or eight chicks. It is mainly the male who obtains food for the whole family. Then the female increasingly leaves the nest and participates in feeding the chicks along with the male.
Brown-headed chickadees feed their chicks often - 300-500 times a day. The food consists mainly of spiders, caterpillars and sawfly larvae. They bring them eggshells, lumps of earth, shells of terrestrial mollusks. Over the entire period of nesting life (about 19 days), approximately 20-30 thousand (800 grams) of various invertebrate animals disappear in the yellow mouths of the chicks.
The chicks leave the nests already able to fly well. As a rule, this happens early in the morning. The chicks look through the entrance hole into a new world for a long time, until the first one suddenly decides to fly. The rest fly out after him and never return to the nest. Excited parents often scream and sing a whistling song. They accompany each chick on its first flight to the place where it lands, and immediately feed it.
This article will talk about one of the surprisingly small inhabitants of mixed and deciduous forests. The conversation will be about birds, which bring considerable benefits to forestry.
This is a black-headed chickadee. She also has other similar relatives, which you can learn about by reading this article.
It should be noted that the characteristics of this bird are a little difficult due to its great similarity to other species of chickadees, for example, the brown-headed chickadee. But more on that below.
Black-headed (or marsh) chickadee: description
The marsh tit, or black-headed tit, is a small tit weighing about 10-11 grams. It is smaller in size than a sparrow and its plumage is not very brightly colored.
The total length with a weight of up to 15 grams is 12-14 centimeters, and the wingspan reaches 18-20 cm. The neck and head are blue-black, the throat and chin are black, and the feathers at the tips have a white border. The back is dark sandy with an olive tint, and the thighs are browner. The tail (with stripe) and wings are grayish in color. The sides are reddish and the ventral region is light gray. Dirty white cheeks, black beak, dark gray paws.
The black-headed chickadee is a fairly active bird. Its flight is very fast and undulating. These birds have no pronounced sexual dimorphism; it is difficult to distinguish a female from a male. Young birds look duller in plumage, and their caps are matte and dark brown.
External differences between species
The black-headed chickadee and the chickadee are very similar in appearance. How to distinguish them? Unlike the second, the upper and lower parts of the body of the black-headed chickadee are clearly distinguishable by color.
This bird has one more detail of black plumage - a small spot with slightly blurry edges just under the beak (does not reach the chest).
It is also practically indistinguishable in nature from another species. What is the difference between the black-headed one and the other? There are two barely visible distinctive feature- the second one has a shorter cap with a bluish tint and a thicker beak.
Habitats, lifestyle
The black-headed chickadee is a bird that lives mainly in deciduous forests and riverine thickets of poplars, bird cherry and willows. It is found, in addition to swampy damp lowlands, and in dry wild thickets, gardens, groves and parks.
The habitats of this small bird vary depending on the time of year. Unlike the brown-headed chickadee, the black-headed chickadee avoids coniferous forests and can only appear in them in winter and autumn, during the period of migration.
In February, chickadees are observed in meadows, among willow thickets and alder forests. In May they can live in spruce-alder forests, alder forests, hornbeam-oak forests, and in June - also in hornbeam-oak forests and alder forests. In dense hazel thickets, in mixed spruce-deciduous forests and in young oak forests they can be found in July, and in mixed forests, among birch thickets and in young pine forests This bird lives in August-September. In October-November, the chickadee's habitat becomes birch forests, mixed forests, alder forests and pine forests.
This bird nests in hollows of deciduous trees and in rotten stumps with rotten wood. As a rule, the hollow is located at a height of about 1-1.5 meters above the ground, sometimes higher. It is cleared by the chickadee itself. If she hollows out a hollow on her own, she carries the wood chips away from the future nest to some distance.
The hollow is usually so small that the nest litter and the bird sitting in it are often visible from the outside. In a clutch (April-May) there are 5-9 white eggs interspersed with a reddish-brown hue. Rarely, these birds sometimes make a second clutch.
The black-headed chickadee is a common (and sedentary) bird, and these species of birds, like other tits, live together in flocks and pairs. They are very dexterous and agile, they like to cling and hang on the tip of thin branches.
How is a nest built?
The outside of the nest is made of green moss mixed with wool and cobwebs. The tray itself is usually lined with wool mixed with horsehair, and sometimes with down and feathers. The average diameter of the nest is 3-6 centimeters. The height of the tray is no more than 3 cm, and its average dimensions are 1.4 cm.
The black-headed chickadee nests in solitary pairs. For the most part, unlike its related species (brown-headed tit), it uses an existing hollow, only expanding it when necessary by plucking wood from it. Nests are sometimes located at a height of about 3 meters. Typically, the diameter of a hollow's entrance is no more than 3.5 cm. This bird can also inhabit artificial hollows.
This bird has an average of 7-10 eggs in a full clutch. Their shell is milky white, shiny, covered with small rusty-reddish brown spots. The weight of the egg is 1.3 g, the diameter reaches up to 13 mm, and the length reaches 17 mm.
Nutrition
The black-headed chickadee feeds mainly on caterpillars and spiders, and in autumn and winter on seeds, including thistle seeds.
These birds also feed on insects and their larvae with chitinous hard shells, as well as flies, spiders and aphids.
In summer, adult birds feed on ants, weevils, spiders, and various small beetles. In the spring, they eat the anthers of willows and aspens, and drink the sap of maple and birch trees. In autumn and winter periods Most of the diet consists of seeds of spruce, pine, maple, black alder, rowan, and various herbaceous plants etc. Chickadees feed their chicks mainly on butterfly caterpillars and spiders.
Peculiarities
The voice of the black-headed chickadee is very diverse. His call is a sonorous “qi-qi-zhee-zhee” or a little sadder “pyuyu-piyuy.” Her singing is surprisingly sonorous and melodic. Also, a chickadee can utter a quick “weep, wheeze” with hoarse exclamations and metallic notes, or a drawn-out “tey-tey-tey”, meaning alarm. There is another whistling song - "sis-si-ris-si".
A characteristic feature of this bird is the manner of staying only in pairs and strong affection for each other. In winter, ordinary mixed flocks in which small wintering birds gather, as a rule, one or two marsh chickadees can be found. They rarely live alone. Partners do not separate either in winter or autumn, even when they are in a flock of their relatives or join flocks of other tits.
The chickadee's lifestyle is sedentary and in winter it always stays near the nest.
In conclusion: some interesting facts
- In spring (usually in April), pairs decide on a nesting site and females begin to choose a hollow for themselves. The eggs are incubated for 14 days. Chicks usually fly out of the nest on days 17-19, after which the male also joins in raising them.
- There have been cases where there were chickadee nests lined with moss mixed with hare fur and a small amount feathers
- Black-headed chickadees are useful birds for forestry because they feed on many insects, especially small bugs (several studies have been done on the stomachs of these birds).
Chickadees can serve as a model of marital fidelity, which is based on the mutual sympathy of partners and the habit of living in the same territory.
One of the most common tits. In terms of total numbers, it is second only to the great tit (about it next time), and in central Siberia it is sometimes common and more common,
than any other bird of this family
Chickadees live in pairs that formed in the fall. These birds nest in coniferous or deciduous forests, and build houses in a special way: unlike other tits,
The chickadee hollows out a hollow and later places a nest inside it.
Like some other species of tits, chickadees store food in the summer and early autumn - insects, spiders, etc. The tendency to store food in chickadees is very pronounced.
Throughout the year they hide some of the food they find. Food storage can be observed even in winter, seemingly under the most unfavorable feeding conditions.
Young plumes begin to hide food as early as July.
Powderfish hide their reserves in a wide variety of places: on coniferous and deciduous trees, less often on bushes, stumps and even on the ground at the base of trunks.
On coniferous trees puffballs have reserves in almost all parts of the tree. Hidden food is sometimes covered with a piece of bark or lichen.
In a day, one bird can equip and fill up to two thousand such storage rooms!
However, chickadees apparently do not remember the location of reserves and find hidden food by chance, on a par with what was first discovered.
The use of reserves sometimes begins almost immediately after they are stocked. The birds eat some of the found reserves, and hide some again.
Thanks to this constant re-hiding, the food is distributed more or less evenly over the area.
The reserves are used collectively, not only by chickadees, but also by many species of tits, as well as other wintering birds.
A winter tit flock is a close-knit group, all members of which are well aware of each other’s character, which allows them to avoid unnecessary quarrels.
Code of laws governing social life chickadee, very simple - every bird knows who to give in to and who to show its power to.
The Russian name “puffy” was given to the manner of strongly fluffing up the plumage in inclement weather. Look how that one on the tree is puffed up like a puffball!
Gadgets also have blue eyes)
It was an evening shoot, the nuts came less and less often, and then apparently they all flew back to their nests. It was dusk.
