Aegithalos caudatus
A fluffy pink-and-white pom-pom with a very long tail.
Size: 14 cm (mostly tail) | Habitat: Garden Birds | Season: All year
Impossible to mistake once seen, the long-tailed tit is a tiny round ball of black, white, and dusky pink, trailing a tail longer than its own body. They almost never travel alone.
Tiny round body · very long black-and-white tail · pale pink flush on flanks · black eye-stripe over a white head
Highly social, long-tailed tits move through gardens and hedgerows in noisy, chattering flocks of six to twenty, calling constantly to stay in contact as they feed.
Long-tailed tits build extraordinary domed nests from moss, lichen, and spider silk, stretchy enough to expand as the chicks grow — and lined with over a thousand feathers.
The Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) is unmistakable: a tiny, round, pink-flushed body trailing a tail longer than the rest of its body combined. Unlike true tits, it belongs to its own family, and its constant contact calls keep flock members, almost always relatives, together as they move through hedgerows and woodland edges.
Their domed nests are architectural marvels, woven from moss and spider silk, camouflaged with lichen, and lined with over a thousand feathers for insulation, taking up to three weeks to build. Long-tailed tits practise a rare form of cooperative breeding in Britain, where unsuccessful pairs often help raise the chicks of close relatives instead of nesting themselves.
Understanding the long-tailed tit reveals how family loyalty, elaborate nest engineering, and communal roosting allow one of Britain's smallest birds to survive in numbers well beyond what its size alone would suggest.
🟢 Conservation status: Green (UK Birds of Conservation Concern 5)
Green-listed, with numbers that have grown significantly in recent decades, partly linked to milder winters. However, because they roost huddled together in exposed hedgerows, prolonged cold snaps can still cause sharp local losses.