Description
Nominate race palustris: Black cap and nape with a blue sheen visible at close quarters. The black 'bib' below the bill is rather small; the cheeks are white, turning dusky brown on the ear coverts. The upperparts, tail and wings are greyish-brown, with slightly paler fringes to the tertials. The underparts are off-white with a buff or brown tinge strongest on the flanks and undertail coverts. The bill is black and the legs dark grey. Juveniles are very similar to adults, but with a duller black cap and bib, more greyish upperparts and paler underparts; they moult into adult plumage by September.
The Marsh Tit weighs 12 g, is 11.5 to 12 cm long (from bill to tail) and the wingspan is 19 cm. Wing length ranges from 60–70 mm. The oldest recorded Marsh Tit in Europe reached the age of 11 years, 11 months.
Marsh and Willow Tits are difficult to identify on appearance alone; the races occurring in the UK (P. p. dresseri and P. m. kleinschmidti respectively) are especially hard to separate. When caught for ringing, the pale 'cutting edge' of the Marsh Tit's bill is a reliable criterion; otherwise, the best way to tell apart the two species is by voice. Plumage characteristics include the lack of a pale wing panel (formed by pale edges to the secondary feathers in the Willow Tit), the Marsh Tit's glossier black cap and smaller black 'bib', although none of these is 'completely reliable'; for example, juvenile Marsh Tits can show a pale wing panel. The Marsh Tit has a noticeably smaller and shorter head than the Willow Tit and overall the markings are crisp and neat, with the head in proportion to the rest of the bird (Willow Tit gives the impression of being 'bull-necked').
A measure of the difficulty in identification is given by the fact that, in the UK, the Willow Tit was not identified as distinct from Marsh Tit until 1897. Two German ornithologists, Ernst Hartert and Otto Kleinschmidt, were studying Marsh Tit skins at the British Museum and found two wrongly-labelled Willow Tits amongst them (two Willow Tit specimens were then collected at Coalfall Wood in Finchley, north London, and that species was added to the British list in 1900).
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