A fluffy white mystery: the Korean crow-tit

Blogger's note. What baffles and pleases me about this blog with its modest-but-loyal following is how I get comments, sometimes quite a few, on posts that are several years old. Though I've continued to post here, I sometimes think, "oh, nobody's reading this," and even try to avoid looking at stats, because it's too easy to get caught up in it (and that's not why I do this anyway). Unfortunately, the internet has become one big competition for views, likes and subscriptions in recent years. 

Strangely enough, the biggest reaction in recent times was to a small, satiric piece about a fluffy little bird called the Korean Crow Tit. It started out life on the internet as a  cute 'n fluffy meme which was soon posted and reposted everywhere:

I had my misgivings. The name  "Korean crow-tit" did not seem to match this creature, if in fact it existed at all. It looked more like those fake baby chicks you used to get at Easter, usually stuck onto cardboard. Could this in fact be Fake Bird News? I tried to find out more. 

Here's a sampling of comments and responses I received, some of which are fairly heated for this fluffy little topic. I've removed most identifying remarks, but alternated font colours for (I hope!) clarity.

Hi, Margaret! I love a good internet-"meme" mystery!

So, as near as I can figure, the bird that is colloquially referred to as a crow-tit in Korea is the Parrotbill - the Vinous-throated Parrotbill Sinosuthora webbiana.

The picture that comes up if you google "Korean Crow-tit" appears to be some kind of actual tit-but possibile leucistic. Not the parrotbill, though I see some superficial resemblance.

I will have to investigate further to see if I can figure out what that mostly white bird is that is coming up in the search.

Marc Devokaitis
Public Information Specialist
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The bird appears to be a Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus).

As a korean its really uncomfortable to see googles first result on korean crow tit is your page. U have never seen birds in korea yet when im so happy that our crow tit is getting some attention and love from people all over the world u say its fake??? What evidence do u have to say its fake??? U have none... because they r true...i grew up with them. This page is offensive

I was very curious myself if this bird actually existed... That should not be taken offensively.. it's such a beautiful little bird it almost does look fake due to its sweet and perfect appearance....

I know this is probably not relevant anymore, but I wanted to try giving insight even if it's late. As far as I can tell from asking my friends and relatives who grew up in Korea, the word "baepsae" (뱁새) is typically used in conversation to refer to both the Vinous-Throated Parrotbill and the Japanese Long-Tailed Tit (which is colloquially called the Korean Crow-Tit). I think the Parrotbill is the more official/proper translation, but the reason the Long-Tail appears so often when you search "Korean Crow-Tit" seems to be because most Koreans think it's the cuter of the two and the word is used to refer to the Long-Tail far more often than the Parrotbill as a result. (But that's just what I've learned from people around me. I can't confirm anything for 100% certain.)

This is the Japanese Longtailed tit! :) Probably the cutest bird to ever exist imo

This is Aegithalos caudatus

Absolutely true....This is the right name. ..checked everywhere ...On YouTube too..Thanks so much .

Hello! I came across this post by accident but wanted to add that here in Europe we have a variant which is called Codibugnolo (meaning long tailed) - it's a tiny white bird with black stripes (pretty similar to the 'Korean Crow Tit'). Also about the cotton-like appeareance, like someone already said, it could just be the bird fluffing up its feathers from the cold.. my budgies sometimes look like that when they clean themselves, other times they completely puff out and look like starving pinschers haha! Hope I didn't intrude with this comment

It is a species of long tailed tit that mostly resides in Hokkaido, Japan known as Shima Enaga and the white floofy balls are only native to japan. Other variants have different colours

Adding onto the information above, the bird is not a Japan-limited bird. it's habitat extends from Asia to Mediterranean. One reason why the photo shows white colouring is because it is a migratory bird that changes its colour depending on the season. I just wanted to correct the misinformatin about the bird being Japanese.

For everyone saying this is a Japan-only bird, it's actually widespread all across Central/East Asia and Europe and (gasp) even Korea! They're a migratory species and change the color of their plumage from pinkish-gray to the winter black/white. Yes, the adorable white cotton ball can also be found in places like Germany. As for the 'fake' Korean crow-tit, Aka the Baepsae - Vinous-Throated parrotbill. It looks very similar to the long-tailed tit and also lives in places like Korea, Vietnam and Japan.

Yes finally, we have them here in Sweden too! Here they're called stjärtmes in Swedish. Lovely small bird. All this 'controversy' about this bird just shows how easy people trust what they read online, kindly source check please. :)

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PLEASE NOTE! This is a link to the original article, entitled FAKE BIRD NEWS: The Korean Crow-Tit, from 2017. I'm STILL getting comments on it. COOL!

FAKE BIRD NEWS: The Korean Crow-Tit

Be my little fruit dove

Before last night, did I know anything at all about the fruit dove?

Did I know there WAS such a thing as the fruit dove? 

This is the kind of thing I learn from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology .It's overwhelming, is what it is, because when you decide to study just one variety of one kind of bird, this is what you get. And this list is by no means a complete list. There are some fifty (or: there were some fifty, until mankind in his infinite wisdom wiped them out forever) kinds of fruit dove, and if you want to know more about any of them, just click on the links below.

I made this little gif slide-show to demonstrate just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not going to tell you which fruit dove is shown in each photo, because that would take me all day! But if you're interested - and I swear I did not give two hoots about the fruit dove until last night - this information will get you started. 

Species

Dwarf fruit dove (Ptilinopus nainus), Lobo, New Guinea, 1828
Banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus cinctus
Black-banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus alligator
Red-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dohertyi
Pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Flame-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus marchei
Cream-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus merrilli
Yellow-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus occipitalis
Red-eared fruit dove, Ptilinopus fischeri
Jambu fruit dove, Ptilinopus jambu
Oberholser's fruit dove, Ptilinopus epia
Banggai fruit dove, Ptilinopus subgularis
Sula fruit dove, Ptilinopus mangoliensis
Black-chinned fruit dove, Ptilinopus leclancheri
Scarlet-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus bernsteinii
Wompoo fruit dove, Ptilinopus magnificus
Pink-spotted fruit dove, Ptilinopus perlatus
Ornate fruit dove, Ptilinopus ornatus
Tanna fruit dove, Ptilinopus tannensis
Orange-fronted fruit dove, Ptilinopus aurantiifrons
Wallace's fruit dove, Ptilinopus wallacii
Superb fruit dove, Ptilinopus superbus
Many-coloured fruit dove, Ptilinopus perousii
Crimson-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus
Ebon purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus marshallianus - doubtfully distinct; extinct (late 19th century)?
Purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus ponapensis
Kosrae fruit dove, Ptilinopus hernsheimi
Palau fruit dove, Ptilinopus pelewensis
Lilac-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis
Mauke fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis "byronensis" - extinct (mid-/late 19th century)
Tubuai fruit dove, Ptilinopus sp. - prehistoric
Mariana fruit dove, Ptilinopus roseicapilla
Rose-crowned fruit dove(Ptilinopus regina) from Australia and Indonesia
Rose-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus regina
Silver-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus richardsii
Grey-green fruit dove, Ptilinopus purpuratus
Makatea fruit dove, Ptilinopus chalcurus
Atoll fruit dove, Ptilinopus coralensis
Red-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus greyi
Rapa fruit dove, Ptilinopus huttoni
White-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dupetithouarsii
Red-moustached fruit dove, Ptilinopus mercierii - extinct (mid-20th century)
Henderson fruit dove, Ptilinopus insularis
Coroneted fruit dove, Ptilinopus coronulatus
Beautiful fruit dove, Ptilinopus pulchellus
Blue-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus monacha
White-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus rivoli
Yellow-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus solomonensis
Claret-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus viridis
White-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus eugeniae
Male pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Orange-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus iozonus
Knob-billed fruit dove, Ptilinopus insolitus
Grey-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus hyogaster
Carunculated fruit dove, Ptilinopus granulifrons
Black-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus melanospilus
Dwarf fruit dove, Ptilinopus nainus
Negros fruit dove, Ptilinopus arcanus - possibly extinct (late 20th century?)
Orange fruit dove, Ptilinopus victor
Golden fruit dove, Ptilinopus luteovirens
Whistling fruit dove, Ptilinopus layardi

SOLVED: the Mystery of the Como Lake Duck!

I've written about this guy before. He's an inhabitant of Como Lake in Coquitlam, B. C., a place we walk around a few times a week.

The lake is filled with mallards, various diving birds (even loons), and, sometimes, great congregations of Canada geese, but this particular duck is totally unique. To be honest, he doesn't even look like a wild duck. I've tried to find out more about him, but since I didn't have a name, only a description, I kept running up against a blank wall.

Over the several years we've seen him, I became more and more curious about this strange rogue duck, and then downright perplexed. Eventually, every time we spotted him I began to go nuts. Something was going on here! He was so big that he seemed like a domestic duck that had gone native. He was piebald in his markings, like a cowboy's pinto horse, and had that long, thick, curvy Donald Duck bill that you see in the barnyard.

A couple of years ago I found a magnificent site for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This is one of the best sites I've ever seen for sheer volume of content combined with ease of use. If you want to find anything bird, it's here.  It's truly user-friendly, with lots of descriptions and thumbnails of species so you can put name to bird, not to mention recorded calls and songs for every type of bird. This site helped me figure out what those eerie "whoo-whoot-whoo-WHOOOOO!" sounds were that I was hearing on summer nights (barred owl). The call is described on the web site as "who cooks for you?", which delighted me. The "youuuuuu" sounds exactly like a descending trill on a bassoon.

Finally it occurred to me that if anyone in the world could identify my mystery duck, it would be the Cornell Laboratory. I emailed them, attempting to attach a link to the video of it  (which may or may not have worked) and describing it as well as I could.

Some time went by, but not much. Then today I got this email, which delighted me no end!

Hi Margaret,

It is definitely a domestic-type — closest I can find is something called a Magpie Duck. It is a hybrid of Mallard origin.

http://www.zooenc.eu/en/magpie-duck/

Best,
Marc

Marc Devokaitis
Public Information Specialist

Now that I had something to google, everything matched up and I realized that it had to be a magpie duck. Apparently, these birds make good eating and are cultivated for their meat, a fact that had better not get around Como Lake. It's surrounded by avid fisher-persons who might just be up for a duck dinner. This guy is so friendly and hangs around the shore so much that he'd be an easy catch.

(Not our duck. Presented for comparison only.)

A couple of times we thought we saw a smaller duck of this type. A female? It's possible, though we didn't pay enough attention. I'm not sure why it's called a magpie, but that's his name, and he apparently has mallard blood, perhaps the way I have Spanish blood from the Spanish Armada. (Not. We were all dirt-poor Irish.) Some of the photos I've found show ducks with iridescent mallard-like patches on their heads. 

Well I'll be damned!

Meantime, though this song isn't really about my duck, it's very lovely and I want to include it here.

And one more barred owl video.

POST-SCRIPT: Since writing this admittedly-sparse piece, I've had some thoughts. Thoughts of the ugly duckling, of changelings, of barnyard ducks escaping certain death and flapping away from the hatchet. Of strange-looking magpie ducks who barely escaped being dinner.

This is why I like this duck so much, and why it drove me so crazy before I knew what it was. Though it plainly didn't fit in its environment and looked sort of like a turkey among doves (albeit a nice-looking, handsome turkey), it seemed so comfortable, so glad to be where it was. Its fellow ducks, mostly mallards, didn't seem to notice that it was different, but then - they're used to honkin' hundreds of Canada geese, not always the most hospitable creatures, suddenly descending on the lake and taking it over, doing weird things like swimming in big circles. One friendly-looking duck, one big farmyard-looking duck was not going to be a problem, and they all dunk and dabble the same way, ducktails up. Plenty of gunk and ill-advised tourist-food to go around.

But at the same time. . . I'm depressed today, not quite psych-ward depressed but down, and I wonder if it's because the air has been let out of a longstanding mystery. This weird, doesn't-fit-at-all duck suddenly has a sort of identity. He at least makes sense now. And I don't know whether I like that. I don't know whether I'll be so prone to saying, "Oh, look, there he is!" when he glides or waddles into view. Or maybe I will, but it won't be the same.

It's as if he's been operating under an alias, or has been The Duck That Has No Name, and is now "named", or at least species-ed as a magpie duck. Odd name, that - one would think it would be harlequin or something, with those mixed markings. The only association I have with magpies is Heckle and Jeckle.

I've done a bit of digging into the breed, not a lot mind you because that would bore me, and I can't find reference to it being any kind of hybrid. The YouTube videos I've found feature pet magpie ducks, not obviously being fattened up for the kill.

The magpie duck is maybe 50% larger than the mallards, heavier-bodied, with that cobby build and waddly proportion that aren't common in wild birds. Yes, the mallards have large breasts, but they're mainly floats, a way to keep themselves upright in the water and protected from cold. This guy is just solid, man, carved out of alabaster, or plain wood like a decoy bobbing around in the water. There probably would be some pretty good eating there, with some orange sauce on the side.

Ducks, swans, all that stuff, it's the material of fairy tales and legend. I have a mystical attachment to birds, which is why I went into such deep mourning at the very premature death of my beloved Paco. I hardly had any time with her at all before we found her dead in her cage, for no reason anyone ever understood.

The fact my back yard birds have fled is a mystery, and also pains me. Last year the yard was teeming with species, including loud, arrogant, impossibly gorgeous Steller's jays who would swoop in and empty out the feeder. We also saw juncos, chickadees, wrens, thrushes, towhees, sparrows, and - every once in a while - the magnificent visitation of a flicker burning bright.

Now, they've all gone. Where? and why? Is it because we have a cat now? Because we never expected to have a cat. Bentley is a hunting voyeur only, and is not allowed to go outside and become catmeat. But he does spend considerable time peering out the back window.

And yet, last summer, the first summer we had him, the birds still teemed.

When I go to Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, blackbirds literally flutter down out of the sky and eat out of my hand. I feel like freaking St. Francis of Assisi. They turn their heads this way and that, their eyes like obsidian beads, their feet freaky black leather twigs. What are they thinking?

Birds do seem to think with a single mind, like the Borg. They exist as collectives. Like humans, they're flock animals, only far more clever than we are. Certainly, they are better survivors. When it all collapses, when the day of reckoning comes, will some of the birds make it? Hitchcock portrayed them as freakish and merciless, and yes, there is that aspect to them. The fat pigeon that took over my hand at Piper Spit weighed about twenty pounds, and I realized as I looked at it that, close up, it was as hideous as the dinosaur from which it evolved.

POST-POST. I felt bad about this, about mentioning Bentley as one of the reasons the birds fled from the back yard. Because it might not be that, at all. We've noticed how dramatically bird populations wax and wane, even week-to-week. Those first couple of visits to Piper Spit were so bird-heavy that I assumed it was always like that, a teeming bird paradise. Then, one week we went and there were only sullen-looking heaps of geese (geese not being my favorites - they have a habit of hissing at you, before they lower their heads and charge). No more magnificent sandhill cranes or iridescent swallows or gorgeously-plumed wood ducks or or or - . But next time we went, about 2/3 of them were back. I don't know what drives them, I don't.

But it's not Bentley! Bentley is like a second child born after tragedy, especially beloved. He is just the best cat ever.

UPDATE from 2021! This post has so many post-posts that I hesitated to add this addition. But since I just got a comment from someone about the Mystery Duck, I thought I'd post a link to a collection of YouTube videos I shot over the past five years of the ducks we came to call Bosley and Belinda. Haven't seen Bosley in several months however, and we are getting worried. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv59M8aSlCSb4R7FRY7jsB__G0fj4Odt4