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COLUMN: Get to know local birds – the bushtit and wrentit

A wrentit in flight (Harry Fuller/Special to Salem Reporter)

Recently an interested observer emailed me a question about two small birds found here in the Willamette Valley. Their names make it sound like they are related. Her question: What is difference between the bushtit and the wrentit?

I am colorblind so I suggest you make your own calculation in that realm, but to me bushtits are a full shade paler than wrentits. Neither bird has any bright colors or bold patterns. Both have round bodies and long tails. Both have small pointed beaks. 

Bushtits are the smallest bird in Oregon that is not a hummingbird. The two species may share habitat, especially areas of dense brush. Wrentits have a clear, musical bouncing-ball song you can listen to on Cornell’s All About Birds website. Bushtits are not musical. They have whispery calls to keep flock, couple or family together.

A bushtit (Harry Fuller/Special to Salem Reporter)

Their behaviors are very different. Bushtits are gregarious and nervous, often seen in gangs of twenty or more when not nesting, fluttering nervously out to a feeder, back to the shrubbery, back and forth, never settling for long. The largest wrentit group you could ever see would be a family.

Though neither species migrates, bushtits travel a bit, never settling until they roost at night. Wrentits spend their entire lives skulking in a thicket. Wrentits do not flock and stay on territory all year long, among our most sedentary birds. Wrentits rarely go over ten feet above ground. They are not found east of Cascades or north of the Columbia: Oregon, California and Baja, that’s their range. Bushtits are more widely spread in western US and arid parts of Mexico and Central America. 

I have never heard of a wrentit at a feeder, while bushtits devour suet and even sunflower chips. They are often accompanied in their foraging by other small birds – nuthatches, chickadees, warblers, even a downy or two.

Wrentits hide their little cup nest low in a dense thicket. Bushtits hang their long grass sac in a tree about ten feet above ground.

The two -tits share one impressive credential, unique among all native Oregon birds. Each is the sole species in its respective family in the Western Hemisphere. Their ancestors crossed the Alaskan land-bridge and survived, coming here from Asia where their cousins survive in numerous similar species.

Wrentits are one of the many species of parrotbills. Bushtits are in the much smaller clan of Aegithalidae, long-tailed tits. A species by that name (long-tailed tity) is pretty common in brushy or forested parts of Europe. I would occasionally see them (flocked) in a London park or cemetery.

For information about upcoming Salem Audubon programs and activities, see www.salemaudubon.org, or Salem Audubon’s Facebook page.

Harry Fuller is an Oregon birder and natural history author of “Freeway Birding.” He is a member of the Salem Audubon Society. Contact him at [email protected] or atowhee.blog. His “Some Fascinating Things About Birds” column appears regularly in Salem Reporter.

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