Paridae

Also known as tits, chickadees, titmice, parid, tit bird, titmouse, tit

family of birds

OverviewAI-generated

Paridae is a family of birds within the order Passeriformes, class Aves, and phylum Chordata. It belongs to the superfamily Sylvioidea and is governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The family was described by Vigors in 1825 and holds an accepted taxonomic status. Common names for the group include tits and chickadees, as well as meisefamilien and sinice.

Members of this family primarily feed on seeds and insects. The taxon is classified under the kingdom Animalia. Records of Paridae are held by institutions such as UCMP, TTU, CLO, MSU, and BPBM, with occurrences documented in the United States, Australia, Japan, and a location identified as Zz. The family has an occurrence count of 79,771,662 and is referenced by 940 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 37 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, GBIF, Gbif Occ, WoRMS, iDigBio, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Species

tits & chickadees

Paridae

FAMILY

KingdomAnimalia
PhylumChordata
ClassAves
OrderPasseriformes
FamilyParidae

Observations recorded79,771,662

via GBIF

Museum specimens

Specimen records: 21
With media: 3
Family: Paridae
Collections: UCMP, TTU, CLO, MSU, BPBM
Recorded in: United States, Australia, Japan, Zz

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Encyclopedic overview

The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute the Paridae, a family of small passerine birds which occur mainly in the Northern Hemisphere and Africa. Many were formerly classified in the genus Parus.

Eurasian and African members of this family are referred to as "tits", while North American species are called either "chickadees" (onomatopoeic, derived from their distinctive "chick-a dee dee dee" alarm call) or "titmouses", the latter being an older name that was used for all tits. The name titmouse is recorded from the 14th century, composed of the Old English name for the bird, mase (Proto-Germanic *maison, Dutch mees, German Meise), and tit, denoting something small. The former spelling, "titmose", was influenced by mouse in the 16th century. Emigrants to New Zealand presumably identified some of the superficially similar birds of the genus Petroica of the family Petroicidae, the Australian robins, as members of the tit family, giving them the title tomtit, although, in fact, they are not related.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paridae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.