Cinereous Tit
Parus cinereus
Also known as: Asian Tit, Cinerous Tit, Eastern Great Tit, Oriental Tit, Southern Great Tit
About This Species
Look for an active, acrobatic tit with a black cap and bib contrasting against pale grey underparts, working along branches, foliage and bark crevices in woodland, parks and gardens as it gleans insects and seeds. It often joins mixed foraging flocks outside the breeding season, which makes autumn and winter a reliable time to encounter groups moving through vegetation together. Its scolding and whistling calls carry well and often reveal a foraging flock before the birds themselves come into view.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- Watch from a short distance and avoid approaching nest holes in tree cavities or nest boxes too closely, since repeated disturbance near a nest can cause parents to abandon it.
- Its Asian range spans many countries with differing wildlife protection laws, so any specific rule about nest disturbance or minimum distance should be treated as local rather than assumed to apply throughout its range.
- Where the legal position is unclear, staying back from any nest cavity and observing general foraging flocks at a relaxed distance is the sensible default.
Seasonal Activity
489,484 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Paridae
Photo
(c) patricktai, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
CC-BY-NC-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.