the titmice are back ... for now
there’s a new sound on new york’s tree-lined streets: the “squeeee-dee-dee-dee” of the tufted titmouse. tufted titmice are one of the most common year-round birds of the eastern deciduous forest, but this year, their presence seems to be part of an emerging story in the five boroughs.
tufted titmice are fluffy gray marbles with pointy crests, plus black eyes and tiny black beaks like something made of felt. they like bird feeders and acclimate quickly to human presence. any authoritative account of the tufted titmouse will include some reference to the fact that these birds don’t migrate. earlier this year, an experienced new york birder joked to me that on account of their nonmigratory nature, tufted titmice were the “holy grail” of coastal morning flights watches, where observers post up somewhere to count birds reorienting after a night of movement. well, this year, some of us have found the holy grail.
after over a year with few titmice in new york city, they’ve started showing up everywhere—what we call an “irruption” in the bird-liking biz. this fall, birders using ebird have recorded highest-ever single-location tufted titmouse tallies in four of the five boroughs: 40 in queens, 165 in the bronx, 310 in staten island, 500 in manhattan, and while the brooklyn record is still 100 from 1995, i was sure i had 100+ in green-wood cemetery last month but didn’t do a thorough enough count to report it. and yes—tufted titmice are appearing in morning flight. last month, a few of us saw a flock of 8 gather restlessly at the tip of breezy point and then head out across new york harbor (at least, they tried, we didn’t see if they turned back or not). pretty crazy for a small, nonmigratory bird.
while titmice might be “nonmigratory” in the literal sense of the word, they definitely move around. if you look on ebird, the number of titmice observed in new york always decreases for the summer and increases again in the fall. that’s not crazy for nonmigratory birds, because birds disperse in the fall after breeding. but based on the ebird data and my conversations with fellow birder/nerder joe gyekis, it seems like a new pattern is emerging in new york city:
if you look at the above charts for manhattan, it first seems kinda random which years there are a lot of titmice and which years there are few titmice, plus there are always a few birds in the summer. but since 2003, the number of summertime birds has decreased to nearly zero, and a regular, approximately biennial pattern has emerged of some years having lots of wintering titmice, and some years having none.
major grain of salt: it’s only been a few years, and for all we know, this could just be a statistical fluke. plus, my sample size is small for the 2003-2007 period. but i think you can at least call it a notable trend. and it matches trends for some other non-migratory eastern forest birds, like white-breasted nuthatches, who have followed an identical pattern i wrote about a few years ago.
it’s hard to exactly know what’s going on, of course. but the range maps of many eastern deciduous forest birds have expanded north since the mid-20th century, including carolina wren, red-bellied woodpecker, and northern cardinal, with climate change and more bird feeders listed as major causes. the tufted titmouse’s range has expanded with them, and the usda forest service projects that its range will continue expanding in response to climate change. the northern extent of the titmouse range seems to be limited by the minimum temperature, rather than by food, according to birds of the world. but there’s also a regular, less-than-annual pattern of deciduous trees producing lots of seeds, a possible driver of the blue jay movements i talked about last month.
this next bit is utter speculation on things i have no authority to speculate on, but has come from my conversations with more experienced folks like joe and doug gochfeld: as climate change continues driving birds north, maybe the conditions are rougher for these birds at the edge of their range. in some years they would need to move south to survive, while in others the weather and food situation can support them in the north. and maybe new york’s status as a migrating bird trap in the northern (but not northernmost) part of the titmouse’s range makes it a good place to observe southbound birds. that doesn’t explain everything, of course, like why there are fewer observed titmice in the slow years and summers than there used to be. and again, there are other factors, human and not, that might manifest as either causes of the movement or as biases in the data.
so, is there some grand pattern of climate change, range expansion, bird feeders, regular tree crop cycles, and other factors, combining into an emergent phenomenon of cyclical titmouse movement that we’re uniquely positioned to observe in new york city? or is there something else at play? either way, take advantage of this opportunity to observe this very cute bird in the trees outside your house. because if this pattern continues, you won’t get the chance again until the fall of 2024.
postscript
probably my last public walk of the year is this weekend! come find me sunday, november 6, 8-10 am at the stranahan monument near the north entrance to prospect park, behind the taco cart. it’s free, no registration required. this will be a great time to see tufted titmice and maybe only tufted titmice. dress warm and remember that it’s the morning after daylight savings.
also, during these years with lots of titmice, you’ll see lots of videos of hungry titmice feeding directly from people’s hands. please don’t do that or encourage it, because habituation to humans decreases birds’ anti-predatory responses.
finally, i saw a pretty cool bird this week: a tropical kingbird, a very common bird in central and south america but one rarely encountered in the united states aside from southern texas and southern arizona. however, they’ve begun straying northward with increased frequency. they’d never been recorded in new york until 2020, but now they’ve shown up every year since then. doug gochfeld and max epstein found the below bird at breezy point in queens last friday. also, new jersey reported a tropical kingbird earlier this week, the first ever for the state. close inspection of the many photos revealed the tail had the exact same feather wear as the queens bird, strongly suggesting it was the same bird, having just traveled 150 miles south.
