‘She’s like a Rainbow’ the Rolling Stones once sang. Well, maybe they were talking about these little birds. The white-browed tit-warbler (Leptopoecile sophiae), part of the family of bushtits, is a native of the Himalayas, Russia and North-West China and is perhaps one of the most remarkable little birds you will ever see.
The colours on the male bird look like a rainbow, or a ball of cotton dipped in psychedelic paint.
Weighing just 6 to 9 grams (0.21–0.28oz) and being usually less than 10cm long, these little fellas really are tiny – especially when you consider that their tail makes up most of their length. First described by Russian Nikolai Severtzov in 1873, they are now unsurprisingly a favourite of birdwatchers. However, you need to be a pretty adventurous birdwatcher to catch a glimpse, as these birds tend to live in remote areas and are rarely found in towns and cities. Indeed, they tend to be only found living in heights 2,000m above sea-level, though they do head towards lower elevations in winter.
The little birds are not only lovely to look at, but they are also lovely to each other. Like many species of birds, they are monogamous, meaning that once they find a partner, they mate and stay faithful to that partner for life, raising their chicks as part of a family pair. The female will usually lay around 4 to 6 eggs, and the mother and father will then take turns looking after the chicks while the other is off hunting, which consists mostly of foraging for bugs and other goodies among the rocks.
While many species around the world are facing extinction due to hunting, global warming and habitat loss, this is thankfully not one of these stories. The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) lists the species under ‘least concern’, which means that they don’t fear for the long-term survival of the birds. This is largely due to the elevations at which the birds live at, meaning they are kept far away from most humans and from household cats, which have annihilated large swathes of low-lying bird species over the past few decades.
So, while it is unlikely you are going to see one of these birds when you are walking down the street, you can never-the-less know that if you are indeed walking in the Himalayas or the mountains of Russia and see a bright rainbow bird, like a cotton ball dipped in paint, you can tell your friends it is a ‘white-browed tit-warbler’!
COMMENTS