Hey Little Tit ! Your Name Gives Me A Giggle Fit

Pics : 1-6 : Green Backed Tit - Sattal | Pics : 6-8 : Black Throated Bush Tit - Sattal | Pics : 9-11 : Green Backed Tit - Pangot | Pics : 12-14 : Himalayan Black Lored Tit - Ramgarh | Pics : 15-16 : Coal Tit - Pangot

The first photo of a Tit that I posted online was of the Yellow Browed Tit (Pic : 9) and I’d said that this tit doesn’t look anything like one. Well, that bird does look different and my crowd was mostly all wild life guys. Even then, it was found to be humorous by so many. I dread having to explain these birds to my son when he grows up a little.

Tit, the word comes from the old English words tit and mase, which combined, means small bird. People kept getting mase wrong and kept saying Titmouse. Well, it’s not a mouse so they dropped the second bit altogether. The other similar word started as Teat, which is of Germanic origin. If we hadn’t shortened titmouse and continued to use teat, the confusion would have been avoided.

There are 82 types of Tit birds found across the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia, North America and Africa making up the Paridae family that consists of tits, chickadees and titmice. They are noisy, active, and social. They come in different sizes that do hang out together. They get more territorial probably during the breeding season and are known for their intelligence given their little size. Great Tits and Blue Tits in Britain have learnt how to open foil milk bottle caps to get to the cream.

Ye, time nahi dengi ! You need to be at 1/2500 shutter speed or faster if you can afford cause you won’t know when one decides to take off and if one does, you need to catch that. These confident little guys hang in groups and strike awesome poses as you can see. Of the 5 that I’ve seen so far, The Green Backed Tit was the largest. I had multiple sightings of these guys but the most notable was the one right next to the place where I was staying in Sattal. They looked like older and bigger cousins of the Black Throated Bushtits (Pics : 1-6) that were around my friend’s personal hide set up. They weren’t as fidgety as the smaller tits and had this air of superiority around them that I’d have too if I was the biggest guy in my group. The Black Throated Bushtit gave me that elusive little flying bird shot that I was looking for so desperately (Pics : 6-8). I just love the look of these birds with that mask around the eye and that little pony tail kind of hair growth in the back that makes them look so damn cute all the time. The Himalayan Black Lored Tit is all around Uttarakhand in the winter (Pics : 12-14). Gorgeous colours on these guys and this one (Pic 13) was all stares towards me till I clicked him and then totally turned away as if to say, ok we’re done now. What fun ! We found the Yellow Browed Tit on our way to Pangot (Pics : 9-11) . Thing with Pangot is that its thick vegetation on both sides of the road over there and I found that pretty obstructive when it came to birds that fly around a fair bit. Plus side was that the light coming through the vegetation makes it look like my subject‘s giving a performance (Pics : 9 & 10). We found the coal tit showing off his take off action on the road to Pangot as well (Pics : 15 & 16).

There are 82 kinds of these birds on the planet. Seeing them all in the wild would be a whole project by itself and not a cheap one at that. I’m reminded of a story I recently heard in Rajasthan of this gentleman who travelled to 3 continents for one photo of an owl that would complete his collection. None were first time visits btw. So no excitement of new hunts there. He finally found one in Udaipur, 700 kms from his home in Delhi. His guide said that he was visibly unwell and palpitating after he made the picture and had to get out of the vicinity of the bird. Dude had gone through over 1500000 Rupees and multiple years of planning and executing travel looking for that one bird that people around him were photographing on their mobiles and by chance as it sat on a light pole next to a garbage dump.

This game of ours can be so brutal I tell you. That’s why I don’t intend to collect by species but it just happens and you just don’t know when it takes over. Saving grace for me in this regard is that I’d prefer an awesome picture of common species to even an average photo of a rare one any day. But then, one always lusts for new subjects so you just never know now, do you?