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

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family Aegithalidae. It is found in mid-southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and sporadically in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and 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 ...

s are boreal

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

s and temperate forests. It was formerly considered conspecific 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 planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

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. 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 Burmese tit 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