Eurasian Penduline-Tit | Remiz pendulinus

Voice

The call is the best feature: a high, thin, drawn-out and slightly descending tsiiiuu, easily missed among other reedbed sounds. Also short tsi-tsi contact calls in small groups. The song, a soft twitter with trills, is rarely heard in the region.

Identification

Small and finely built, with a short, sharply pointed, conical bill and a fairly long tail. The adult male has a pale grey head with a broad black mask from the bill through the eye to behind the cheek, a rufous-brown mantle and sandy underparts, sometimes with some rufous on the breast. The female has a narrower, brownish-black mask and a duller mantle. Juveniles lack the mask and are plain sandy brown with a paler head. Eastern birds (forms menzbieri and allies) often have more black on forehead and crown and a deeper chestnut mantle; birds with a fully black head may point to Black-headed Penduline-Tit (Remiz macronyx), a separate species not included in this guide because there is no confirmed record from the region.

Confusion species

Bearded Reedling (Panurus biarmicus), a vagrant in the region, is larger and orange-brown with a very long tail; the male has a drooping black moustache rather than a mask. Shrikes such as Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio) also have a black mask but are much larger, with a hooked bill. Young penduline-tits without a mask can recall a small, drab warbler; note the conical bill and the tit-like hanging from reed heads.

Habitat

Reedbeds, reedmace, tamarisks, willows and poplars along rivers, canals, lakes and marshes; in winter also in the reed fringes of fish ponds and brackish marshes. Feeds hanging from reed heads and reedmace spikes, picking out seeds and insect larvae. The nest, a felted pear-shaped pouch with an entrance tube, hangs from a thin branch over water.

Range and movements

In the Maghreb a scarce winter visitor to the wetlands of northern Morocco, northern Algeria and northern Tunisia (including around Ichkeul). In Egypt a scarce winter visitor to the Nile Delta and the Faiyum. In the Levant a fairly regular winter visitor in small numbers, in Israel mainly in the Hula and Beit She'an valleys and the fish ponds of the coastal plain, and further in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan; breeding along rivers has been reported in Syria and northern Iraq, but is poorly documented. In Iraq a winter visitor to the southern marshes; in Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates a scarce to rare winter visitor, involving eastern birds. Beyond the region it breeds from Spain and western Europe through central and eastern Europe and Turkey to western Siberia and Kazakhstan; northern and eastern birds migrate to the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

• Resident
• Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
• Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

In winter listen at reed fringes and tamarisks along fish ponds for the thin tsiiiuu; in Israel the fish ponds of the Beit She'an and Hula valleys are a good bet, in Tunisia Lake Ichkeul.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened; the European population has expanded in the west. In the region scarce and patchily distributed; loss of reedbeds and riverine woodland is the main local threat.

Scientific name

Remiz pendulinus | (Linnaeus, 1758)

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Motacilla pendulinus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Remiz was introduced in 1819 by Jarocki. Remiz is the Polish word remiz for the penduline tit. pendulinus is Latin for 'hanging', from pendulus, after the purse-shaped nest suspended from a branch. The specimen the first description was based on came from Poland.