“…and today we wrestle between good SEO and saying the awkward name of a bird over and over. But more on that later.”
If you were walking through the woods one day, you might see something strange… a fluffy white mass up in the trees. You might think it was a hanging goat carcass or a pinata of the abominable snowman from the stop-motion Rudolphi Christmas special. Well, you’d be wrong on both points. It’s actually the nest of the penduline tit, a tiny bird with a tendency for traps. But having options helps this bug-out bird survive here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description
Penduline tits are small finch-like passerine birds that come in a coat of earth tones like a modern minimalist man cave.
They have white heads with a black bandit mask around their eyes. Their shoulders are draped with a burnt orange that fades to dark brown down on their wings. Their bellies are slightly more of a cream color than their heads and their tails have dark black and light grey patterns.
There is very little sexual dimorphism when it comes to color, except that females might have slightly faded tones by comparison to males.
Measure up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words measure up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a Measure Up intro this week. That means, we get to hear from an animal and Carlos has to guess what it is.
- European Goldfinch
- Red House Finch
- Eurasian Bulfinch
- Nate Barcalow from the band Finch
Length
- 7.5 to 11 cm (4.3 inches)
- How many pendulines go into the depth of Europe’s deepest lake?
- Hint: The deepest lake is Hornindalsvatnet in Norway. The surface of the lake is 53 meters (174 ft) above sea level.
- Answer: 4,672 pendulines. The lake is 514 meters (1,686 ft) deep.
Weight
- 9.3 grams (0.33 oz)
- How many pendulines go into the weight of a Medjool Date?
- Hint: A Medjool date is a fruit native to Morocco but it’s also grown all over the middle east and even in the United States.
- 2.5 pendulines. A Medjool date is 24 grams.
Fast Facts
The Eurasian penduline tit is native to Western Europe and its breeding range expanded in the 1980s. It can be found all over the Palearctic region, which is all of Europe and Asia north of the equator.
They have a huge range, up to 1-10 million square kilometers (0.4-3.8 million square miles).
They build soft little nests, which we’ll talk about later. But these nests are so nice to live in, they once were homes to more than just birds. They were once the tiny house of the feet of European children. Apparently, central European children once wore these silky sanctuaries as slippers.
They like to eat bugs and they’re active foragers, like many small Passeriformes. They may also eat seeds, fruit, and nectar as seasons allow.
Major Fact: Nesty Business
Penny and the rest of her family are pretty normal-looking birds. What puts them on the map are their unique nests. As you heard in the intro, their nests are fluffy blobs attached to relatively thin branches near the tops of trees.
Sometimes, they’re hanging down precariously and other times, they look a bit more stable. Mostly these nests are made out of animal hair, wool, and plant material and they’re held together by spiderwebs. The entrance is a weird spout coming out of the top. And unlike many animal nests, it’s a big big house with lots and lots of rooms
But the Cape penduline tit has a secret – literally.
When trouble comes a-knockin, Penny has a safe room. The spout entrance is actually a false entrance. Any predatory birds, snakes, or unwanted males that make their way into the entrance will be bewildered like the stormtroopers in A New Hope. They’ll just be faced with a smallish empty room.
Then once the threat leaves, Penny, Han, and Chewie emerge from their trap door and go about their merry business of chaotic neutral smuggling and sabotage
But unlike the Millennium Falcon, the trap door is actually right above the spout entrance. When Penny enters the spout, she opens a slit in the ceiling with her foot and climbs through, with the trap door closing behind her. This gives her access to the main part of the nest and pulls a bait and switch for enemies.
Ending: So build your nest, tend to your young, and never buy a house without a few trap doors like the penduline tit here in LDT.
Thanks
Thank you to Casy for creating our theme song. To hear more of Casy’s music search Casy Michelle on Youtube.
Thank you to Brian for creating the episode art. See more of Brian’s art at xNamaru on Instagram or Twitter.