As it is our 50th anniversary year, every week, I am focussing on a particular aspect of the site's phenomenal history. With spring in full flow, our wardens have been out monitoring nesting in the reedbed, and some of our most famous birds - the bearded tits are doing pretty well so far this season. I thought therefore, that they would be an ideal candidate for this week's blog...
Beard or moustache?Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the bearded tit is a tit with a beard, the name tends to have that implication, but it is actually very misleading. They aren’t members of the tit family at all, but were given this name due to similarities with long-tailed tits. They are actually in a family of their own, with seemingly no other living birds being closely related to them.
The males have impressive, dark facial markings, which look like more of a moustache than a beard. By contrast, the females are much more simple in colour, in order to camouflage among the reeds. They both however, often get called "beardies" for short.
Male bearded tit by David Mower
Female bearded tit doing the splits by David Mower
Their other name is bearded reedling, which gives a hint as to where they like to live. Bearded tits rely on reedbeds, like the one we have here at Leighton Moss. Reedbed is a very unique habitat that has suffered great losses over the decades, due to drainage for agriculture and development, which has affected bearded tit numbers. Bearded tit populations also suffer if there are prolonged periods of cold or wet weather in winter, and when we have very wet summers, which affects breeding.
Breeding beardies
Leighton Moss is the only site in north west England where bearded tits breed (there are other populations in the reedbeds of the east of England, Scotland and the south coast of England as well as our Blacktoft Sands reserve on the Humber Estuary). Their numbers here have been closely monitored over the 50 years of the reserve by John Wilson who was the first ever Warden here. Even though he retired in 2000, John is still a very active volunteer and has continued to carry out his detailed study into these fascinating birds. You can see from the pictures above that all of our bearded tits are blinged up with coloured rings on their legs. These are part of John's study and allow us to identify individual birds, to see how long they live, and who pairs with who.
Looking into John’s notes from the early days, bearded tits were first seen on the reserve on 4 November 1965, when a small party of five birds were seen. They were present throughout that winter, but after March 1966, there were no records for five years. In November 1971, at least five birds were seen again, and then intermittent sightings for the next couple of years, until finally, in 1973 the first young bearded tit was spotted and breeding was confirmed for the first time.
The bearded tits at Leighton Moss have seen many highs and lows since then. They had a peak year in 2000 when there were 65 pairs on the reserve and produced 275 young! The following year however, they crashed down to 7 pairs and only produced 18 young, due to the weather. They have been up and down since then, but last summer’s better weather meant that 18 pairs produced 48 young, so they are bouncing back once more.
Breeding takes place from April, and it is not uncommon for them to have two or even three broods in a year. At Leighton Moss, they nest in specially created nestboxes or ‘bearded tit wigwams’, the design of which has been pioneered by our current Warden David Mower and is now used around the UK and in parts of Europe too! Click here to see a video of him constructing one.
Male bearded tit with young in a wigwam by David Mower
In the picture above, you can see lots of white spots on the inside of the mouth of the young bearded tit. Many young birds have spots to some extent in their mouths (although the amount in the bearded tits is unusual). These act as a target for the adults to aim for when they are feeding them.
True Grit
The feeding habits of bearded tits are very uncommon. In the spring and summer, they feed on insects, which they also feed to their young. In the autumn and winter however, when there are fewer insects around, they change their diet to eat reed seed. Because they don’t have teeth, they take grit into their ‘crop’ or 'gizzard' - a thick-walled part of their stomach in order to grind up the reed seeds to digest them.
The bearded tits are residents here all year round, but the best time of year to see them is in October and November. To aid them with their unusual autumn diet, the wardening team put out grit on trays just off one of the paths onsite. This not only provides the birds with the essential ingredient of their winter food, but it also allows visitors to see these otherwise elusive characters. They were one of the stars of the show in last year's series of BBC Autumnwatch and were a definite hit with Chris Packham and Martin Hughes-Games.
Male bearded tit on the grit trays by Mike Malpass
As the bearded tits are nesting at the moment, they are generally deep inside the reedbed, making them pretty tough to spot at this time of year, but if you listen out on the Causeway you can often hear them "pinging". We have also got some cracking footage of a live bearded tit nestbox showing on the screens in our cafe, so when you pop in for some lunch, you can sit and enjoy them.