Male vs Female Tufted Titmouse: How to Tell, and Young Birds

How to tell a male Tufted Titmouse from a female, what measurements show about the small differences between them, what each does in the nesting season, and what young titmice look like. For the bird itself, see Tufted Titmouse identification, song and facts.

Not by plumage. Males and females have the same gray crest, black forehead, white underparts and peach flanks, in every season.¹ The only plumage difference reported is that females may average a slightly browner forehead patch, too slight to judge on one bird.

Behavior is the way to tell them, especially from late winter to early summer:

• Singing. The loud "peter-peter-peter" song comes mostly from males, who sing most from March to May. Females sing occasionally, and more quietly, so a singer is probably, not certainly, a male. More, with recordings and spectrograms: Tufted Titmouse sounds: song, calls and what they mean.
• Courtship feeding. A titmouse passing food to another adult in spring is the male feeding his mate. He starts when the pair begins looking for a nest hole and keeps it up until the eggs hatch: during one study his feeding rate rose from 0.41 to 1.81 feeds an hour while she built the nest.
• Wing-quivering. This needs context. Females quiver their wings, apparently to ask the male for food, but both sexes do it before mating, males sometimes do it after feeding the female, and a male crouching and quivering its wings may be about to fight.
• Nest duty. Only the female builds the nest and sits on the eggs. A titmouse that stays in the nest hole for half an hour at a time and is fed there is the female; a female in the hole may hiss at an intruder.
• Fighting. Titmouse flocks defend a territory all winter, and the fighting is mostly done by males: in one Missouri study only males took part in 93% of clashes at territory boundaries.
• Pecking order. Males rank above females in winter flocks, so the winner of a squabble at the feeder is more likely a male.

Females are not bigger than males: if anything they are a little smaller, and the overlap is wide. Both sexes weigh 0.6 to 0.9 ounces (18-26 g).² In one published set of measurements, adult males averaged a wing of about 3.1 inches (79.8 mm) and a tail of 68.5 mm, adult females a wing of about 3.0 inches (76.7 mm) and a tail of 66.8 mm. Bill and leg length were nearly the same. Only in the hand, with a ruler, can size hint at a bird's sex.

The black forehead patch is more telling about rank than sex. Within winter flocks, birds with a wider patch tend to be more dominant, so the patch may work as a badge of status.

The female builds the nest alone, taking 4 to 11 days to fill the hole with damp leaves, moss and bark strips and to line the cup with hair. She lays one egg a day, usually 5 or 6 in all; one female watched in Maryland laid hers between about 5:20 and 5:40 in the morning. She incubates for 12 to 14 days: two Maryland females sat for 70% and 78% of daylight hours, and average sitting spells were about 25 to 40 minutes in three studies. When she leaves the nest it is often in answer to her mate's call.

For the first few days after hatching she broods the chicks for much of the time while the male brings food, about twice as often as she does. By the time the nestlings are 12 days old she has stopped brooding by day and the pair share the feeding equally.

The male's singing likely helps defend the territory and court his mate. He chases off rival males and feeds his partner from nest hunting through incubation: in one Michigan study he fed her an average of 1.5 times per sitting spell. Early in the nestling period he brings most of the food.

Rival males can fight hard. They circle each other in short arcs; once two males fell about 20 feet (6 m) to the ground with their feet locked together.

Tufted Titmice are monogamous. Pairs can form at any time of year, usually stay together beyond a single nesting season and keep company through the winter, though some birds do leave their mates. Extra-pair young are few: of 34 nestlings tested in Ohio, 3 (8.8%), in 2 of 8 broods, had a different father from the male raising them.

Like a fluffier, paler adult with a smudged forehead. From about May to August, young titmice have a smaller, dusky or brownish forehead patch instead of the clean black one, a buff eye-ring, browner gray upperparts, paler flanks, and loose, fluffy feathers, especially on the crest and under the tail. Fledglings also show yellowish corners to the mouth.¹

A partial molt from about June to October replaces most of the body feathers, and by fall young birds look much like adults, though the forehead patch may stay less solidly black through the first winter. Experts can still age them in the hand by contrasts among the wing feathers.

The young leave the nest at 15 to 16 days old, feed themselves within about 5 days, and are independent at about 6 weeks. Unlike most tits and chickadees, many then stay with their parents through the winter, in a small family flock that holds the territory: genetic tests in Ohio found young of one or both territory owners in 9 of 17 winter groups, and only unrelated young in others.³ Now and then a young bird stays into the next spring and helps feed a new brood.

Young titmice learn their songs from the birds around them: within 4 weeks of leaving the nest, their parents' and neighbors' song patterns can be recognized in their singing.⁴

The chick-a-dee call, contact notes and alarm calls are not limited to one sex as far as is known, but two calls are: the hissing call in the nest hole is the female's, and the high "see" notes heard in territorial disputes and courtship have been reported from males.

1. Ritchison, G., Grubb Jr., T. C., Pravosudov, V. V. (2020). Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor), version 1.0. Birds of the World (P. G. Rodewald, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.tuftit.01
2. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Tufted Titmouse: Overview, Identification and Life History. All About Birds. Accessed October 23, 2026. Source
3. Pravosudova, E. V., Grubb, T. C., Jr. (2000). An experimental test of the prolonged brood care model in the tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor). Behavioral Ecology 11(3): 309-314. doi:10.1093/beheco/11.3.309
4. Schroeder, D. J., Wiley, R. H. (1983). Communication with shared song themes in Tufted Titmice. The Auk 100(2): 414-424. doi:10.1093/auk/100.2.414
5. National Audubon Society (text: Kaufman, Lives of North American Birds). Tufted Titmouse. Audubon Guide to North American Birds. Accessed October 23, 2026. Source
6. NestWatch (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). Tufted Titmouse. NestWatch. Accessed October 23, 2026. Source
7. Brackbill, H. (1970). Tufted Titmouse breeding behavior. The Auk 87(3): 522-536. doi:10.2307/4083795