The black-browed bushtit or black-browed tit (''Aegithalos bonvaloti'') is a species of bird in the family

Aegithalidae The bushtits or long-tailed tits are small passerine birds from the family (biology), family Aegithalidae, containing 13 species in three genera, all but one of which (''Psaltriparus'') are found in Eurasia. Bushtits are active birds with long t ...

. It is found in mid-southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and sporadically in

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

s are boreal

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

s and temperate forests. It was formerly considered to be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with the rufous-fronted tit (''A. iouschistos'') of the central and eastern

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

but is now often regarded as a separate species. Sometimes the subspecies ''A. b. sharpei'' (Burmese tit) of western Burma is also treated as a species.

Taxonomy

The black-browed bushtit was

formally described A species description is a formal scientific description of a newly encountered species, typically articulated through a scientific publication. Its purpose is to provide a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differ ...

and illustrated in 1892 by the French zoologist

Émile Oustalet Jean-Frédéric Émile Oustalet (24 August 1844 – 23 October 1905) was a French zoologist who contributed greatly to ornithology. Oustalet was born at Montbéliard, in the department of Doubs (department), Doubs. He studied at the Ecole des Hau ...

based on a specimen collected by the French explorer,

Gabriel Bonvalot Pierre Gabriel Édouard Bonvalot (13 July 1853 – 10 December 1933) was a French explorer of Central Asia and Tibet. Bonvalot was born in the commune of Épagne in the Aube department in north-central France. He was the son of Pierre Bonv ...

, and his companions near

Kangding Kangding ( zh, c=康定), also known as Dartsedo (), is a county-level city and the seat of Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province of Southwest China. Kangding is on the bank of the Dadu River and has been considered the his ...

in the province of

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

of southwest China. Oustalet coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

''Acredula bonvaloti''. The black-browed bushtit is now one of nine species placed in the genus ''

Aegithalos ''Aegithalos'' is a genus of passerine birds in the family (biology), family Aegithalidae (bushtits), encompassing majority of the species in the family. Taxonomy The genus ''Aegithalos'' was introduced in 1804 by the French naturalist Johann He ...

'' that was introduced in 1804 by the French naturalist

Johann Hermann Johann, or Jean-Frederic, Hermann, or Herrmann, (31 December 1738 in Barr, Alsace – 4 October 1800 in Strasbourg) was a French physician and naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi ...

. The genus name was a term used by

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

for three European tits: the

long-tailed tit The long-tailed tit (''Aegithalos caudatus''), also named long-tailed bushtit, is a common bird found throughout Europe and the Palearctic. The genus name ''Aegithalos'' was a term used by Aristotle for some European tits, including the long-tail ...

, the

great tit The great tit (''Parus major'') is a small passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common species throughout Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and east across the Palearctic to the Amur River, south to parts of No ...

, and the

Eurasian blue tit The Eurasian blue tit (''Cyanistes caeruleus'') is a small passerine bird in the tit (bird), tit family, Paridae. It is easily recognizable by its blue and yellow plumage and small size. Eurasian blue tits, usually resident bird, resident a ...

. The specific epithet ''bonvaloti'' was chosen to honour the collector. This species was formerly considered as

with the rufous-fronted bushtit (''Aegithalos iouschistos''). Three

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

are recognised: * ''A. b. bonvaloti'' ( Oustalet, 1892) – southwest, central south China, northeast Myanmar * ''A. b. obscuratus'' (

Mayr Mayr is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Andrea Mayr (born 1979), Austrian female long-distance runner * Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), German American evolutionary biologist * Franz Xaver Mayr (1875–1965), Austrian gastro ...

, 1940) – central China * ''A. b. sharpei'' ( Rippon, 1904) – southwest Myanmar (Burmese bushtit) The subspecies ''A. b. sharpei'' has sometimes been treated as a separate species, the Burmese bushtit.

Description

It is a small, long-tailed bird, long. It has grey upperparts, rufous breast and flanks and a white belly. The head is buff with a broad black mask, white forehead and a white bib, speckled black in the centre. The subspecies ''A. b. sharpei'' has white rather than buff on the head, a dark breastband and a buff belly.

References

*MacKinnon, John & Karen Phillipps (2000) ''A Field Guide to the Birds of China'', Oxford University Press, Oxford *Robson, Craig (2002) ''A Field Guide to the Birds of South-East Asia'', New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd., London black-browed bushtit Birds of China Birds of Yunnan black-browed bushtit black-browed bushtit Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Sylvioidea-stub