Grey-headed chickadee

Grey-headed chickadee
Poecile cinctus lapponicus, Kittila, Finland
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Paridae
Genus: Poecile
Species:
P. cinctus
Binomial name
Poecile cinctus
(Boddaert, 1783)
Range of Poecile cinctus
Synonyms[2]

Parus cinctus
Poecile cincta

The grey-headed chickadee or Siberian tit (Poecile cinctus) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread resident breeder throughout subarctic Scandinavia and the northern Palearctic, and also into North America in Alaska and the far northwest of Canada. It is a conifer specialist. It is resident, and most birds do not migrate.

It is a fairly large tit, at 12.5–14 cm long and with a weight of 11–14.3 g intermediate between willow tit and great tit. The head is dark brown (darkest on the throat and eyestripe, the crown slightly paler) with white cheeks, the mantle cinnamon-brown, the wing feathers blackish with pale fringes, and the underparts whitish with pale rusty-brown flanks.[3]

Taxonomy

The grey-headed chickadee was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Siberia.[4] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.[5] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Parus cinctus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.[6] The grey-headed chickadee is now one of 15 species placed in the genus Poecile that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1829.[7][8] The genus name is from Ancient Greek poikilos "colourful". A related word poikilidos denoted an unidentified small bird.[9] The specific epithet cinctus is Latin for "banded".[10]

Formerly, the grey-headed chickadee was placed in the genus Parus with most other tits, but mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data and morphology suggest that separating Poecile more adequately expresses these birds' relationships.[11]

Four subspecies are recognised:[8]

  • P. c. lapponicus (Lundahl, 1848) – Scandinavia to north European Russia
  • P. c. cinctus (Boddaert, 1783) – northeast European Russia through Siberia to Kamchatka and north central Mongolia
  • P. c. sayanus Sushkin, 1904 – south Siberia and northwest Mongolia
  • P. c. lathami (Stephens, 1817) – north and west Alaska and northwest Canada

Conservation

The North American subspecies P. c. lathami may now be extinct, with no sightings since 2018 anywhere in its range, despite dedicated searches.[12]

The western subspecies P. c. lapponicus is also in serious decline in the west of its range, with the isolated population in southern Norway close to extinction, and major declines in Finland. Ecologists in Folldal, Hedmark, Norway found that the Siberian tits accounted for only 1% of all tit individuals in lichen-dominated pine forest in 2011, as opposed to 64% in 1982. This dramatic reduction is attributed to the interspecies competition with willow tits and great tits, decreased vegetation due to climate change, and logging of old-growth trees which are preferred over new-growth trees. Logging of old-growth forest is thought to be the main cause of the decline in Finland.[13]

References

  1. ^ BirdLife International (2025). "Poecile cinctus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2025 e.T22711750A137662096.
  2. ^ "Poecile cinctus". Avibase.
  3. ^ Svensson, Lars; Mullarney, Killian; Zetterstroem, Dan (16 March 2023). Collins Bird Guide. William Collins. pp. 356–357. ISBN 978-0-00-854746-2.
  4. ^ Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de (1779). "La mésange a ceinture blanche". Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (in French). Vol. 10. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. pp. 173–174.
  5. ^ Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de; Martinet, François-Nicolas; Daubenton, Edme-Louis; Daubenton, Louis-Jean-Marie (1765–1783). "Mésange de Siberie". Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle. Vol. 8. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. Plate 708 Fig. 3.
  6. ^ Boddaert, Pieter (1783). Table des planches enluminéez d'histoire naturelle de M. D'Aubenton: avec les denominations de M. M. de Buffon, Brisson, Edwards, Linnaeus et Latham, precedé d'une notice des principaux ouvrages zoologiques enluminés (in French). Utrecht. p. 44, Number 708 Fig. 3.
  7. ^ Kaup, Johann Jakob (1829). Skizzirte Entwickelungs-Geschichte und natürliches System der europäischen Thierwelt (in German). Vol. c. 1. Darmstadt: Carl Wilhelm Leske. p. 114.
  8. ^ a b Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Waxwings and allies, tits, penduline tits". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union.
  9. ^ Jobling, J.A. (2018). del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J.; Christie, D.A.; de Juana, E. (eds.). "Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology". Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions.
  10. ^ Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  11. ^ Gill, F.B.; Slikas, B.; Sheldon, F.H. (2005). "Phylogeny of titmice (Paridae): II. Species relationships based on sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene". Auk. 122 (1): 121–143. doi:10.1642/0004-8038(2005)122[0121:POTPIS]2.0.CO;2.
  12. ^ "Siberian Tit likely extirpated from North America". BirdGuides. 10 February 2026. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  13. ^ Dale, Svein; Andreassen, Ellen T. (April 2016). "Population decline of the Siberian Tit (Poecile cinctus) in southern Norway and an assessment of possible causes". Ornis Fennica. 93 (2): 77–87. doi:10.51812/of.133890. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
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