Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Eating On The Run: Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)


December 13th, 2014. Some birds – Purple Finches and American Goldfinches – will sit at the feeders to eat. By contrast, Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees will swoop in, alight, grab a sunflower seed, and fly up to a branch nearby to crack the seed open. They repeat this over and over again. Rarely does one sit at the feeder to eat.


2 comments:

Kay G. said...

I agree with these observations!
Also, we have a brown thrasher who gets the sunflower seeds that we scatter on our deck. He will take it to the side (where we can only see the back of him) and will bang his beak down and crack the seed open. We love to see him do this!

JSK said...

'Our' brown thrashers stay down in the bushes along the fence line by the drive - they don't come to the house unfortunately. I wish they would.
I've often wondered if these birds get headaches from banging the seeds to crack them open.