Tit-warblers, bushtits and long-tailed tits | Aegithalidae

Staartmezen | Mitos

Very small birds with a tiny stubby bill and a tail longer than the whole body, so that they look more like a ball on a stick than like a bird. The nest is a closed oval of moss and lichen bound with spider silk and lined with hundreds to over a thousand feathers; its wall stretches as the brood grows. They live in family parties all year: birds whose own nest has failed help feed at another, and at night the party roosts pressed together along a branch. They keep contact with thin, insistent rattling calls that announce the flock before it appears.