Mumruffins

Mumruffins, lollipop birds, lotties...

Although they're with us all year round, I always associate long-tailed tits with winter. This is when they gang together in extended family groups and become more visible is they dash through leafless trees.

What on earth, though, are mumruffins? Local dialect is great for words that few of us have ever heard. Mumruffin is Worcestershire talk for long-tailed tits, one of our most charismatic garden visitors. I usually call them lotties but I've heard others call them bum barrels and lollipop birds; what do you call them? If you’re able to regularly feed the birds this winter you may be lucky enough to receive a visit from a flock of these acrobatic birds. You’ll hear their chitter chatter before you see them flock to your feeders, hang from fat balls and twigs, peck the peanuts and then, just as you’ve worked out what’s going on, they’ll be gone, with their long tails streaming behind them!

Long-tailed tit on a twig facing the photographer - the bird has a grey-white stripe down its head, flanked by black stripes. It has a long black tail, edged with white, and a grey-white breast with a subtle hint of pink — Long-tailed tit by Wendy Carter

Living up to their name, the tails of these tiny birds are about two thirds of their entire body length and they weight in at just 6-8g (that's about the same as a 10p piece). Long-tailed tits are one of my absolute favourites - their dark brown/black and white plumage is tinged with the most delicate pink. They’re generally a bird of woodlands and hedgerows but as winter draws in and tiny insects and spiders become scarce, garden feeders provide an essential food supply. Extended families travel together, numbering 20 or so individuals, and they often pick up other species of birds - look for great, blue and coal tits as well as over-wintering chiffchaffs. They’re constantly on the move during winter, travelling up to five miles to find food, and will usually follow a feeding circuit so if they’ve found food in your garden, they’re likely to pay you another visit.

Really cold winters aren't great news for mumruffins. They're so small that retaining heat on cold winter nights is a real challenge. Roosting in big numbers is essential; they’ll cluster together along a branch or form a ball with their tails sticking out. There's a strict pecking order to this, though, and those lower down the order take more than their fair share of being stuck at either end. It’s not until February and March that the flocks begin to break up and then regroup; the males often stay in the same range and some females move to neighbouring groups.

long-tailed tit leaving a nest - the nest is a moss/lichen ball with a small hole at the top, which the bird is perched on the edge of. The nest is tucked into a gorse bush. — Long-tailed tit at nest site by Wendy Carter

As spring appears, pairs will gradually separate off and begin to nest within the group’s home range. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to watch a pair building their nest - I'd heard their calling and settled some way from the nest to watch them coming and going. The nest was almost complete - a four inch ball of moss held together with spider webs. Their nests contain lichen and around 2000 small feathers (picked up from dead birds) and are fixed amongst the twigs of bushes around four feet or so from ground level.

Two juvenile long-tailed tits sitting in a tree - the birds have brown wings, grey-white breasts and chocolate-coloured heads with a pink eye-ring — Juvenile long-tailed tits by Wendy Carter

Females lay between eight and 12 eggs and when they finally fledge, the chocolate-headed youngsters rove together in a tight flock, constantly chattering to each other as they go. As more broods fledge, the flock grows in size as they search for food and alert each other to potential dangers. The nests are sometimes rebuilt but after mid-May the birds don't try for a replacement brood but, instead, go to another nest within their home range and help feed the young there. Broods with these helpers tend to fair better than those without. Although this sounds like a very selfless thing to do, it’s actually a process called kin selection – the helpers are aiding their own relatives and are ensuring that some of their own genes survive.