I was out at sunrise this morning, along Sheridan Drive, in Cudahy this morning. I’ve been here almost every day this week, and is my favorite fall migration spot. I was already having an excellent warbler morning, when I stumbled across a stunning Azure Tit (yellow-breasted)! I was watching a very nice pocket of warblers and vireos, when I kept hearing a “weird” bird call. It was just a single note, but I could not figure it out for the life of me. After a few minutes, out pops this colorful bird! I knew it was a type of tit just by looking at it, and I thought Blue Tit, but wasn’t sure. I just started snapping pictures following it from branch to branch, hoping to get some good photos for documentation. The sun had just went behind the low lake clouds and it was rather dark, so not great conditions for photos. I ended up with just over 100 pictures of it, in that short of time. It passed by with a group of three Black-capped Chickadees and several Bay-breasted Warblers. It seemed fully alert and wild, and was not tame by any means. It came and went in less than 30 seconds and I didn’t see or hear it anymore. What an exciting sighting! I ended the morning with 54 species and 20 warblers, best warbler day of the week. I had huge numbers of Blackpoll Warblers and Swainson’s Thrushes. Hopefully the weather cooperates this week and I can get out after work for some more action. The Azure Tit is a beautiful bird and sure made a great morning into an amazing morning! Enjoy!
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Way cool! Congratulations!
Thank you, it sure was!
EBird doesn’t show the Azure Tit with a yellow breast but says the Central Asian Tit and Chinese Tit have one. I’m curious how you came to your ID.
I found it on the eBird app on my phone and I entered it as “Azure Tit (yellow-breasted)”. When Tracy sent that email asking about it, I was actually in the process of searching it. I put in “tit” on eBird app and clicked on “tap to search entire database”. I then went and googled everyone until I found a match. I saw it was a sub-species of the Azure Tit.
Shocking indeed! Incredible find; & how great it was found by someone who shares this with others like you do. While this bird is listed as least concern, ebird has not only has no North American sightings listed, but all sights are in the Russia-China area. Also, those sightings (all sightings) are just a handful of birds. For being a bird of least concern it seems suspect that there are less than 100 individuals documented world wide by ebird. I have felt that ebird was a great & thorough world wide data collection site which benefits both birds & people; but gaps like this make me wonder how many more birds are not getting documented properly. I hope very soon ebird changes this & allows this type of information to be shown in it’s public data. I would love to be able to see where the Azure Tit has been seen. Thanks again for sharing this beautiful & astonishing find! I have never heard of an Azure Tit until you mentioned it.
Thank you! I had never heard of it either, until I started digging around for information. At any rate, cool looking bird to see in the wild!
WOW! Striking! Once again your dedication has paid off with the most wonderful images. Thanks so much for sharing. And also a shout out to Tracy in helping to identify this most interesting sighting!
Thank you very much Karie, you are welcome!
Beautiful photos. According to the eBird map I accessed from Birds of the World, this subspecies of Azure Tit is found in the mountains of Tajikistan (on the border with Afghanistan). This is about 200 miles from Kabul. I wonder if it hitched a ride on one of the recent evacuation flights.
Thank you Tom! Interesting information.