Juniper Titmouse

About the Juniper Titmouse

A plain gray titmouse with a pointed crest and an outsized personality - the Juniper Titmouse is what happens when a chickadee's energy moves into the desert mountains and drops all decoration. No black crest, no rusty flanks, just gray on gray and a scolding voice that owns whatever juniper it happens to be in.

In Texas the species is a specialty of the Trans-Pecos highlands - the Guadalupe and Davis mountains - where pinyon-juniper woodland climbs the slopes. It is a strict habitat loyalist: where the junipers end, so does the titmouse, and pairs hold the same territory year-round, often for life.

They forage with the family trademark, hammering seeds open against a branch while gripping them underfoot, and they cache juniper seeds and pinyon nuts by the hundreds against the mountain winter. Nest sites are tree cavities, usually old woodpecker work in a dead juniper limb.

Titmice answer curiosity with curiosity: a little pishing at a Davis Mountains campground usually brings one down, crest raised, to inspect the visitor - which is precisely the moment for the camera.