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WILLOW TIT
Poecile montana
Willow Tit © Rob Robinson
 

• Population
  changes

• Productivity
  trends

• Additional
  information
Conservation listings
Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe)
UK: red (>50% population decline)
UK Biodiversity Action Plan: priority species
Long-term trend
UK, England: rapid decline
UK population size
8,500 territories in 2000 (1988–91 Atlas estimate updated using CBC/BBS trend: BiE04, APEP06)
Status summary
Willow Tits have been in decline since the mid 1970s, and have become locally extinct in an ever-growing number of former haunts. The continuing decline in the CBC/BBS index through the 1990s, following a brief period of stability during the 1980s, is replicated in the CES abundance trend. The UK conservation listing was upgraded from amber to red in 2002. Numbers have changed least in the wet woodlands that the species prefers (Siriwardena 2004). Farmland is now only rarely occupied. The most likely causes of decline are competition with other tit species, increasing nest predation by Great Spotted Woodpeckers, and deterioration in the quality of woodland as feeding habitat for Willow Tits through canopy closure and increased browsing by deer (Perrins 2003, Siriwardena 2004, Fuller et al. 2005). A study of former CBC sites and other woods that were known to have held the species in the past found that the sites still holding Willow Tits tended to be wetter but did not differ in the density of potential nest predators or avian competitors (Lewis et al. 2007, 2009). Willow Tit has shown widespread rapid decline across Europe since 1980, but has declined to a lesser extent in central and eastern Europe than in the north, west and south (PECBMS 2007, 2010).
 
CBC/BBS UK graph

1967-2008: -88% (confidence interval -94% to -76%)

 
Population changes in detail
 
Demographic trends
 
Additional information
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This report should be cited as: Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Leech, D.I., Renwick, A.R., Joys, A.C., Noble, D.G., Barimore, C., Conway, G.J., Downie, I.S., Risely, K. & Robinson, R.A. (2010). Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2010. BTO Research Report No. 565. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends)

Pages maintained by Iain Downie, Mandy T Andrews and Laura Smith: Last updated 14.10.2010