Chickadees and Titmice

It doesn’t take a very long look at this BirdCam 2.0 video of a Tufted Titmouse cracking a seed, as recorded by TreeBreeze, to see that titmice and chickadees share a primary feeding technique. And after all - why shouldn’t they? They’re close relatives in the great family of birds.



In fact, it’s only out of a sense of overpowering but misplaced prudishness that the various species of chickadee in North America are even called “chickadees” at all. Everywhere else these birds exist they are called a “tit,” an English word dating back to the 1540s meaning “a very small animal or thing.” (In case you’re wondering the “mouse” in “titmouse” comes from an even older English word “mase” meaning tiny; thus a titmouse is a “tiny very small animal.”)

Incidentally, TreeBreeze has quite a collection of his BirdCam 2.0 videos online at his YouTube channel - one-hundred-eighteen if we counted correctly - all of which are collected into three different playlists. We’re sure he’d enjoy having fellow BirdCam enthusiasts take a look at them, and leave a comment or simply give them a “thumbs up.”