A rare sighting of a cresting tit? (1 Viewer)

[Sharnie]

Hi guys!

I am sure that I spotted a crested tit in Friston forest, East Sussex near the cuckmere in June 2017 at 14:30pm. I frequently bird watch and had my RSPB birdwatching book on hand whilst walking through the forest. I spotted the bird, which I could not immediately identify. It looked the spitting image of a crested tit both in the book and from online photos however, after further research I discovered that they are only found in the Scottish highlands.
I have looked at other tits and none identify as this bird, I also looked up birds with there head plumage risen ... still no similarity. I am gutted that I didn't get a photo!

Does anybody think that it is at all possible that this could have been a rare sighting of perhaps a confused juvenile (it's crest was not as high as an adults)?

Has anybody else seen a crested tit in the south?

Thanks,
Sharnie

 

[KC Foggin]

Hi there Sharnie and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum :t:

Hopefully, someone from your side of the pond will ring in on your inquiry. Meanwhile, enjoy

 

[Chris G6 UXU]

Hello Sharnie and welcome to the forum, enjoy and all the best.

 

[delia todd]

Hi Sharnie and a warm welcome from me too.

I think what you may have seen was either a Blue Tit or a Coal Tit, they can both raise their head feathers to look like a crest when they're agitated. It is rather unlikely to have been a Crested Tit, as they live in highland areas (over 1000 m).

You can read more about them HERE in our Opus article about the species.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us.

 

[John Cantelo]

Crested Tit is an extremely rare bird in southern England despite breeding along the Channel coast of France as it is a very sedentary species. in 2000 I did a little research on the topic and found none of many 19th C records from England very convincing (some claims certainly being fraudulent and others now very hard to judge. Oddly, there were far fewer claims of the species from England in the 20th C. Two reported in 1945 lack sufficient detail to be convincing, but the following 20th century records seem reliable - two reports in 1947 (Dawlish, Devon Dec & Scilly Cornwall Sept), one in 1971 (Scilly 1971), one in 1984 (Northumberland trapped & ringed August/September), one in 1992 (Cumbria March), two 1997 (Sussex May Hastings & June Worthing). Offhand, I don't recall any English records in the 21st century although I suppose that there might be one or two.

 

[Kits]

Welcome to BirdForum! I am sure you will find lots to interest you here, and I hope you enjoy your visits.

 

[Howdie123]

Another sighting of a crested tit in Sussex

Crested Tit is an extremely rare bird in southern England despite breeding along the Channel coast of France as it is a very sedentary species. in 2000 I did a little research on the topic and found none of many 19th C records from England very convincing (some claims certainly being fraudulent and others now very hard to judge. Oddly, there were far fewer claims of the species from England in the 20th C. Two reported in 1945 lack sufficient detail to be convincing, but the following 20th century records seem reliable - two reports in 1947 (Dawlish, Devon Dec & Scilly Cornwall Sept), one in 1971 (Scilly 1971), one in 1984 (Northumberland trapped & ringed August/September), one in 1992 (Cumbria March), two 1997 (Sussex May Hastings & June Worthing). Offhand, I don't recall any English records in the 21st century although I suppose that there might be one or two.

Your notes were helpful to me John when I came to consider an observation I made last Sunday. It confirms that crested tits are resident in the near Continent so at least allows that what I saw is plausible.

On Sunday 14 April 2019 in Bolney, West Sussex I was leaning out my upstairs bedroom window taking in the sunshine when a bird flew into the top of an ash tree some 30 metres from me and started singing lustily, "He'e'e'ere I am" repeatedly. Since this was not a song I recognised I grabbed my binoculars and got a clear sight of the bird. It was of the tit family and the most striking feature was its large and prominent crest. It was perhaps 10 to 15 per cent larger than the blue tits which were flying to and from their nest in the end of my garage immediately below me. Sadly I did not have a camera to hand and the bird flew off a few minutes later.

Because the call was unusual and distinctively different to a blue tit, I looked on xeno-canto for recordings of crested tits. The song I heard most closely matched that of the 6th on their list (accessed 17th April 2019) posted by Vincent Purchaire on 23 March 2019.

https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Lophophanes-cristatus

XC463472 - European Crested Tit - Lophophanes cristatus.mp3

This sighting comes after a week of Easterly winds. Vagrant and migratory birds from the near Continent are sometimes seen and heard in Bolney under these conditions. In recent years I have recorded hoopoe, turtle doves, a spotted crake (at least to my satisfaction), and nightingales are frequent visitors. It is clearly not a Scottish bird.

 

[Fritz73]

Hola Sharnie! Welcome to Birdforum :t:

 

[Lisa W]

Hi Sharnie, welcome to the forum.

 

[Paul Longland]

If the bird you saw was larger than a blue tit then it most definitely was not a crestie. They are about the size of a coal tit which is smaller than a blue tit. It is far more likely that what you saw was possibly a Marsh tit which is not dissimilar in general colouring. Crested tit is strictly sedentary and in the UK only occurs in native Caledonian pine forests in the highlands region of Scotland.

 

[Howdie123]

If the bird you saw was larger than a blue tit then it most definitely was not a crestie. They are about the size of a coal tit which is smaller than a blue tit. It is far more likely that what you saw was possibly a Marsh tit which is not dissimilar in general colouring. Crested tit is strictly sedentary and in the UK only occurs in native Caledonian pine forests in the highlands region of Scotland.

I am sure it was a crested tit. The crest was large and distinctive - the colouring blueish and not dark. It definitely was not a Marsh tit - looked nothing at all like that. This bird was likely blown in from Europe. The fact that it is not often reported does not surprise me. They are small birds that are easily overlooked. It was only the distinctive call that exactly matched the bird recorded in the Rhone Valley alerted me that it was something different.

 

[Stonefaction]

Not sure what your bird could be but if it was larger than a Blue Tit and blue-ish then it certainly wasn't a Crested Tit. They are brown, black, white and buff coloured. Blue isn't a colour that crops up much in British birds. Those that are blue-ish that spring to mind (other than Blue Tit) would be Nuthatch and Wheatear with neither particularly fitting your description, or behaviour. Apart from blue-ish, what other colour(s) was the bird, and how did you decide it was definitely a Tit?

Using the information you've posted (size, colour, up a tree, location) I ran it through the Merlin app to see what it came up with and Crested Tit didn't appear in the suggested birds. The app is free to download and can be helpful for trying to ID birds (you'll need to download the UK 'pack' as well).

EDIT: Having thought about it a little more, the most obvious answer appears to be a Blue Tit with its crown feathers raised. There are some photos online of this but it isn't something you see too often.

 

[Howdie123]

Okay I'm colour blind to a significant degree and colour is not something I rely on. I should have written Blue-grey but left the grey off.

I have to admit on making the identification on the appearance of the crest and the distinctiveness of the call. I have now gone back to look at some images based on other comments here and found this:- http://www.oiseaux-birds.com/card-crested-tit.html

This was the bird I saw. The prominent collar seems to be diagnostic. As regards size as an objection to the identification, the bird I saw singing lustily, as I said, from the top of an ash tree (not yet in leaf) some thirty meters from my window was appreciably larger than the tits I was watching below me. Scientific descriptions of blue tits and crested tits give the same dimensions, i.e. 11-12 cm. Male birds are appreciably larger than the females, so a large male crested tit might be 12.2 cm and a small blue tit might be 10.8 cm a difference of 11 per cent. It may be that comparing the sizes of the two species in front of me, the crested tit through binoculars and the blue tits, which were only three or four meters from, without, I may have over-estimated the crested tit as up to 15% larger but that having been said I have no doubt that what I saw was a male crested tit.

What I saw was a crested tit. The rest of you may doubt this but I have no doubt.

 

[Howdie123]

Not sure what your bird could be but if it was larger than a Blue Tit and blue-ish then it certainly wasn't a Crested Tit. They are brown, black, white and buff coloured. Blue isn't a colour that crops up much in British birds. Those that are blue-ish that spring to mind (other than Blue Tit) would be Nuthatch and Wheatear with neither particularly fitting your description, or behaviour. Apart from blue-ish, what other colour(s) was the bird, and how did you decide it was definitely a Tit?

Using the information you've posted (size, colour, up a tree, location) I ran it through the Merlin app to see what it came up with and Crested Tit didn't appear in the suggested birds. The app is free to download and can be helpful for trying to ID birds (you'll need to download the UK 'pack' as well).

EDIT: Having thought about it a little more, the most obvious answer appears to be a Blue Tit with its crown feathers raised. There are some photos online of this but it isn't something you see too often.

Well, I've thought about this and if crested blue tits can occur without the central dark stripe down their breasts then it could be a cresty blue tit but since as I said I was making a direct comparison between the bird and the blue tits virtually at my feet I can say categorically that it did not have a stripe down its breast - a point I particularly noted.

Iam no stranger to doubting Thomases. In 1981 in a seminar on rabies given by Professor Norman Noah of CDSC Colindale I predicted that rabies would turn up in Australia - then rabies free as the result of introduction by bats and was roundly scoffed at. some twenty years later my prediction proved correct.

Again in 1987 I correctly predicted that an outbreak of itchy rash in a watersports in Suffolk was caused by avian Schistosomiasis and was roundly pooh poohed since it had never been reported there by my very senior and knowledgeable boss but so it proved to be. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2545380/pdf/bmj00276-0052.pdf

Sussex and Kent might reasonably be deemed 'local' to coastal France so I have no hesitation in predicting that more crested tits will be shown to have occurred in these counties in the years to come.

 

[PYRTLE]

You may be correct that Crested Tit could be proven to be in Sussex. If you have the time and inclination then please do consider submitting a record to the Sussex Bird Recorder with as many details as possible of your sighting. Hopefully it may have stayed in the area though birds such as this are not particularly long lived.

 

[GWB77]

Howdie123

Firstly. Blue Tits don't have a full central stripe down their breasts. That is a feature of Great Tit. Perhaps you saw a Blue and Great Tit together?

Crested Tits, despite being present in northern France, are extremely rare in southern England (perhaps almost unknown, in-fact). There are well observed sites on the south coast, where constant effort ringing of birds has been on-going for decades (Dungeness bird observatory, Pett Levels, Cuckmere, Sandwich Bay bird observatory, Portland bird observatory etc). These locations (despite thousand of visiting birder each year, plus millions of birding hours) have not recorded a single Crested Tit.

Recording and observing of birds is not a new phenomenon - there are detailed records from some of the locations (where people are employed to observer birds) going back 100+ years. To suggest this species has been 'missed' in the past shows a serious lack of understanding around the history of bird observations in the UK (more elusive and cryptic species are recorded annually at these sites). To suggest "that more crested tits will be shown to have occurred in these counties in the years to come" is verging on ludicrous.

In all probability, what you have seen is very unlikely to have been a Crested Tit.

Its a shame you didn't get a photograph of it, then we could establish what was seen.

 

[mark clements]

Howdie123

Blue Tits don't have a central stripe down their breasts.

Sorry, but the one on the nest box outside my window as I type has a definite but narrow and ragged stripe; not the bold black stripe of the great tit, but a stripe, non the less.

Also, Blue tits suffer from various feather mites that can play hook with identification sometimes, could a mite infestation of the head have caused the crested anomoly.

Personally I am open to it being a very rare crested or an odd blue, because I was not there and I do not know what was seen.

Having been decried by a bird group a few years back for claiming a Black Kite, near Peterborough, a bird that I know really well from months in the South of France, Italy and Spain, just to have it confirmed by an RSPB warden a couple of days later, makes me more cautious to deny people's claims.

Maybe you may get a Red Headed Bunting at somewhere like Grafham Water, but that was 1976, and there was a Marbled Duck the same month. Let's play the percentage game of them both turning up within a month versus a Crested tit from 25 miles away.
Harry

 

[GWB77]

Black Kite = most misidentified rare species in UK. Also has the accolade of most rejected species by BBRC.

Last year a Black Kite was claimed near Peterborough. It was seen by a chap who seems them annually in France, and has seen them annually for 25+ years (he said he'd seen thousands in his lifetime!). It was also claimed by another birder the following day. Between them they watched it for quite sometime quartering fields. However, when the bird was eventually seen by others (by myself and two other birders), it was actually an aberrant Red Kite, which had lost much of its red pigmentation, and showed heavy feather wear. The original observers were adamant it was Black Kite - yet it wasn't. And photos proved it. It transpired the bird had been in the county for a least 6 months, and was seen at other locations, where it was claimed as a Black Kite and where others saw it, and knew it was a Red Kite, but thought it could be mistaken for a Black Kite too.

Photos here; http://weedworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/odd-kite-great-fen-cambs-28718.html

I used to be on the CBC records committee. I don't recall an accepted Black Kite record from Peterborough (especially not one seen by an RSPB warden too). When/where was this bird?

As to the Red-headed Bunting at Grafham Water - this will have been an escape (Red-headed Bunting isn't even on the UK list). You only need to look at the massive reduction in records since the ban on importing wild birds to see the impact it has had on reducing records of escaped eastern buntings. I think since this ban, there have been 1-2 UK records, whereas prior to the ban, they were almost annual!

Marbled Duck (again, not on the UK list) is a better candidate for vagrancy, but I don't think the GW record was ever submitted, so for all I know, it might have been ringed or have clipped wings.

 

[mark clements]

There was a Black Kite over the A1 near Yaxham, 2013 Early in the season, but then I am not a lister or twitcher, so cannot give precise date and time, I genuinely believe the guy that c0nfirmed it to have been an RSPB warden, from the Lodge, but could have been a differnt warden, I was talking to him at the Lodge within 2 weeks of seeing the bird.

I am very keen on all birds of prey and have been since my first Honey Buzzard at Beaulieu Road Station 52 years ago. I walk the Alps, The Aveyron Gorge, The Pyrenees, and Eastern European cities, where Black Kite are present and often prolific. I recall last years dismissed one and would have sided with abherrent Red Kite. As such I am confident of what I saw, however as I am not a member of a club, do not go on group trips and don't list or twitch I also know that I would be often dismissed as someone that would not know any unusual birds by those that are group members.

I no longer put any sightings out there, 1) have not been the first to see or confirmatory second in a long time, and 2)thing I see there are always some that will dismiss from afar without full knowledge of what was seen.

Quite honestley I don't give a damn about was it or wasn't it a crested tit, but I do care when people are dismissed by those that werent there.

I know that Lady Amhersts has been 'seen' in 2019 (see BUBO) and listed by a notorious lister, but personally I do not believe he saw a LAP from a self sustaining group, in that location. Did he see one? - maybe, but within the rules of the game, probably not.

I know I saw a black kite, I know it was pilloried, and subsequently someone at the Lodge confirmed it to me, sorry no name, which will add to your conspiracy theory. I saw it, someone else, knowledgeable saw it, but its not on anyone's list as I stopped listing years ago, and therefore it should not offend anyone.

Back to the bunting and duck, they are still currently cited - "Strangely, Red-headed Bunting and Marbled Duck were both recorded within a month of each other in 1976!

Mark Hawkes, April 2018"

https://www.cambridgebirdclub.org.uk/where-to-watch-birds/grafham-water

I did not say they were reported, agreed by committee or otherwise accurate, but Cambridgeshire Bird Club uses them as a lure to Grafham Water.

When I lived in Grafham Village we had a pair of budgerigars in the village for a couple of days, no one questioned my ability to ID them, but they were there.

You all see what you see. AND it may just have been a crested tit.
:t:

 

[GWB77]

Just to clarify. The Black Kite you saw wasn't actually seen by another person at the same time (the person from the Lodge), or it was?