There was a time, a few decades ago, when the most difficult thing about Marsh and Willow Tits was to know which of these two very similar species one was seeing (the calls are much easier) but now the main difficulty is seeing either of them at all. The identification features are now better known and described but the birds are much rarer.
As a voluntary warden at Minsmere RSPB nature reserve, 50 years ago and at this time of year, I was instructed by the new warden, Jeremy Sorensen, to spend a day on the road between Scott’s Hall and Eastbridge looking and listening for Marsh and Willow Tits because, I gathered, the former warden, Bert Axell, had been chiding Jeremy for not yet having seen a Willow Tit at Minsmere. After proving that I knew my pitchu-pitchu-pitchu from sneh-sneh-sneh I was despatched. I saw and heard no Willow Tits and I don’t think many have been seen there since. And they have disappeared from most of southern England but still seem relatively common a hundred miles north. Marsh Tits have declined lots too but not quite so much.
This book is an excellent description of the two species (which are not only similar to look at but also in many aspects of their ecology). It is very well illustrated with helpful graphs, maps, tables and so many photographs of the two species that if you can’t tell them apart and spot the white on the bill of the Marsh Tit by the end of the book there is no hope for you.
My only Marsh or Willow Tit last year was a Marsh Tit on my local patch of Stanwick Lakes in April – and was my first there for very nearly a decade. Why have both species declined? The author plumps for competition with Blue and Great Tits for nest sites being a large part of the answer based on his and others’ observations of the commoner species turfing the two rarer ones out of nest sites (and predation by Great Spotted Woodpeckers plays a part too). As we boost Blue and Great Tit populations with tons of garden bird-feeder seeds, this problem gets worse it seems. Are northerners meaner with the bird food or is there more to the story than this?
When the BTO looked at their datasets they did not find much evidence for competition (or predation by Great Spots) being a major factor but those studies are now 20 years old and they were always going to be blunt instruments in detecting such impacts. Generally speaking, I’d always back the person with good observations in the wild rather than datasets in the office. The chances that analysing Common Birds Census data could throw much light on competitive impacts on Marsh Tits must have been low to start with.
Is climate change perhaps a factor? There is interesting evidence from Poland regarding phenological mismatch (eg having your offspring too early/late to exploit peak food supply) but I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you which way it goes.
When I am wondering about climate change I reach for A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds (Huntley et al. 2007) where I discovered something interesting. The book plots the breeding ranges of most European breeding birds and relates those distributions to three climate variables and then plugs in the future expected values of those variables to map the potential climate space under an expected future climate. Willow Tits are ‘predicted’ (the authors don’t use that term but it is allowable in a book review!) to lose much of their distribution and move north, and that applies strongly to the UK range whereas Marsh Tits are, according to this analysis, and in the UK, rather less vulnerable to climate change. Interesting!
The author is clearly very taken with these two species after studying them in this country and abroad for many years and one gets the impression he is very fond of them. I smiled to see that he described them as two species that are ‘part of our common natural heritage’, which is of course true, but then, so are so many other species.
Hardly a non-birder in the country knows that they exist although some might reference that song in the Mikado (not mentioned in this book) about the ‘tit willow’ who committed suicide (by drowning, which does sound more like Willow Tit habitat than Marsh Tit habitat) because of a broken heart. Gilbert must have written the libretto in around 1884 by which time ornithologists in central Europe had realised that there are two very similar species but you can read in a much earlier Poyser book, H.G. Alexander’s Seventy Years of Birdwatching, that we were still trying to work out which was which in the UK in the period running up to the First World War.
Having spent some time, long ago, studying Marsh Tit food hoarding (with others) in Wytham Wood I’m a fan of that species in particular.
This is a very readable, attractive and clear account of what we know and don’t know about them. A strength of the book appears to be a very thorough knowledge of non-UK studies of the two species and of other titmice. If these two species were farmland species rather than woodland ones, maybe this book would have been written years earlier by someone and we would be even closer to a full understanding of what’s going on. But thanks to the research by this author, and his excellent summary of what we know, at least the current position has been made clear.
The cover? Attractive, as one would expect from Darren Woodhead, so I’ll give it 8/10.
The Marsh Tit and Willow Tit by Richard K. Broughton is published by T&AD Poyser.
I notice that the editor of this book was Hugh Brazier who has edited several of my books too, and many of Ian Newton’s and a wide range of other authors. Hugh’s contribution to the ornithological literature is a major one, acknowledged with thanks by the authors he has helped.
Buy direct from Blackwell’s – a proper bookshop (and I’ll get a little bit of money from them) 
[registration_form]
Source link
