Hello and welcome.

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds

podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners.

This is episode 91.

It's all about birds in the family parody.

Not parody, P-A-R-O-D-Y, like the Austin Powers movies or The Onion News.

The Avian family parody is spelled differently, P-A-R-I-D-A-E.

These are the chickadee's, tits, and titmice.

Cute little forest-dwelling birds known and loved by many people around the world.

But as you flip through your bird field guide or scroll in your bird ID app,

you might notice that there are some other types of birds that have the word tit as part of their name. For example, there are tit spine tails, tit tyrants, shrike tits, tit berry pickers, bush tits, tom tits,

penduline tits, and long-tailed tits.

Oh, and let's not forget the tit eagles, tit pipers, and dumpster tits.

None of those birds are in the family parody, and some of them don't even exist since I just made them up for the purpose of high comedy.

According to the Bird Name Book by Susan Myers, the word tit came into the English language in the 1500s.

Its origin is Scandinavian, and it means something small, in this case small birds.

I've had a lot of requests to make a podcast episode about chickadees and their kind.

Some species in this family are familiar visitors to backyard bird feeders. They're highly active,

vocal, bold, and sometimes quite confiding with people. It's possible to gain the trust of

tits and chickadees of some species by feeding them seeds out of the palm of your hand.

These birds not only visit feeders regularly, at least in winter, but they'll also

happily lay eggs in artificial nest boxes. All of these traits make birds in the Paradis family

...