Long-tailed Tit Nests: Where, When, Eggs and Helpers

This page covers the Long-tailed Tit's nest from start to finish: when and where the birds build, how the domed nest is made, the eggs and chicks, why so many nests fail, and the relatives who help raise the young. Much of what is known comes from a study of Long-tailed Tits in the Rivelin Valley, Sheffield, running since 1994. For identification, calls and the rest of the bird's year, see the Long-tailed Tit guide.

Early in spring. Flocks break up in late winter and building starts in early March.¹ In Britain the first eggs are laid between late March and late April, on average around 8 April, and laying has moved earlier over the years.² Very exceptionally, fledged young have been seen in England in early February.³

Each pair raises just one brood a year. A pair whose nest fails before early May usually builds again; after that, they give up for the year, and some become helpers at another nest: see helpers.

Usually low in thick, thorny cover. In the Sheffield study the median nest was 1.5 m off the ground, and the commonest plants were bramble (28% of nests), gorse (16%) and holly (15%), then birches.⁴ A sizeable minority of nests are built 6 to 25 m up in the fork of a tree or against its trunk, or hang among the twigs of a conifer as high as 35 m.³

Low nests do better: early in the Sheffield study they were significantly more successful than high ones.⁵ Long-tailed Tits are one of 15 songbirds that the BTO lists as likely to nest in farmland hedges.⁶ Each pair nests inside the area the male's winter flock used, and keeps roosting with the flock, usually until the nest's dome is finished and the pair can sleep in it.

A Long-tailed Tit's nest is a compact, domed, oval ball, about 160 mm tall and 100 mm across, with a small entrance near the top on one side. The walls are moss bound together with spider silk, and the outside is covered with lichen flakes, up to about 3,000 of them according to Birds of the World. Inside is a thick lining of small feathers, often about 1,500.

Nests studied near Doncaster weighed 28.6 g on average, and 41% of that was feathers. When the researchers added extra feathers to some nests, those pairs brought in about half as many feathers themselves, so the nests ended up just as warm: the birds seem to adjust their building to how warm the nest is.⁷ In a study of 42 nests, the lichen did not match the branches the nests were on; it probably hides the nest by reflecting light, so the nest melts into its background.⁸ And in laboratory tests, soaked nests kept their insulation, with water reaching the cup in only a minority of them.⁴

Both birds build. In the Doncaster study, a first nest took 38 days on average: about 23 days for the outer shell, then 16 for the feather lining. A pair that had lost a nest built a replacement in about 11 days.⁷ The birds may still be adding feathers while the female lays.

In a study of 18 woodland birds that use feathers, Long-tailed Tits needed far more than any of the others, gathered them from up to 115 m from the nest, and were the first to breed, perhaps to avoid competing for feathers.⁹

BTO nest records give a clutch of usually 6 to 8 eggs, on average 7, though anything from 2 to 14 has been recorded. The eggs are tiny, about 14 by 11 mm and weighing 0.9 g, and British clutches have become smaller since the 1960s.² The eggs are white, either plain or with tiny reddish freckles; across the species' range clutches are larger, mostly 8 to 12. The female lays one egg a day, around dawn.¹⁰

Only the female incubates, and the male feeds her on the nest. In British nests the eggs hatch after 15 to 18 days, on average about 16, and the chicks hatch naked and helpless.² In the Sheffield study incubation averaged 16.4 days.¹⁰ Both parents feed the chicks, often with help from other adults.

The young leave the nest at 15.5 to 16.5 days old, on average about 16, based on 849 BTO records.² The parents and helpers go on feeding them for at least two more weeks, and the family then stays together through the winter as the core of a flock.

A young Long-tailed Tit out of the nest is very rarely abandoned: the family is usually close by. The RSPB advises leaving a fully feathered fledgling alone unless it is in immediate danger, and keeping pets away.¹¹

Most Long-tailed Tit nests fail. In the Sheffield study, 79% of 1,613 breeding attempts between 1994 and 2018 failed, and three-quarters of those failures were caused by predators. Where the predator was identified, 68% were crows and their relatives, Jays, Magpies and Carrion Crows, which usually rip the top off the nest; the rest were mammals such as weasels, stoats, wood mice and grey squirrels.⁴

The BTO notes that in Britain nest losses have shifted from the egg stage to the chick stage since the 1960s.

Long-tailed Tits are cooperative breeders: about half of all broods are fed by one or more helpers as well as the parents.¹² Helpers are adults whose own nest has failed. Around a quarter of failed breeders become helpers, 38% of failed males but only 9% of failed females, so most helpers are male, and they usually help close relatives, most often a brother.¹

They choose deliberately. Given the choice of a relative's brood and an unrelated brood at the same distance, virtually all helpers went to their relatives, and failed breeders with no close relatives nesting nearby did not help at all.¹³ They tell relatives apart partly by their calls, learned from the adults that fed them in the nest.¹⁴

Helped nests get more feeding visits and heavier chicks, but no more fledglings in the short term. The difference shows later: young from helped nests are more likely to survive and breed.¹² In the Sheffield study, the estimated chance that a male fledgling stayed to breed locally rose from 16% with no helpers to 43% with four.¹⁵

Not as a rule. They build their own domed nest in a bush or tree, and they are not on any of the BTO's lists of nest-box birds.¹⁶ Most nests are built in thick, thorny cover such as bramble and gorse.

Like every wild bird's, a Long-tailed Tit's nest is protected while it is in use or being built. In England and Wales it is an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy it, and in Scotland the law also covers reckless damage and any other interference;¹⁷ in Northern Ireland intentional or reckless damage.¹⁸ Because many nests are in hedges, brambles and gorse, check before cutting them in spring and early summer.

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6. Hanmer, H. J., Leech, D. I. (2024). Breeding periods of hedgerow-nesting birds in England. BTO Research Report 762. British Trust for Ornithology, Thetford. Accessed 7 October 2026. Source
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8. Hansell, M. H. (1996). The function of lichen flakes and white spider cocoons on the outer surface of birds' nests. Journal of Natural History 30: 303-311. doi:10.1080/00222939600771181
9. Hansell, M. H. (1995). The demand for feathers as building material by woodland nesting birds. Bird Study 42: 240-245. doi:10.1080/00063659509477173
10. Higgott, C. G., Evans, K. L., Hatchwell, B. J. (2020). Incubation in a temperate passerine: do environmental conditions affect incubation period duration and hatching success? Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 8: 542179. doi:10.3389/fevo.2020.542179
11. RSPB. Injured and baby birds. RSPB advice. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
12. Hatchwell, B. J., Russell, A. F., MacColl, A. D. C., Ross, D. J., Fowlie, M. K., McGowan, A. (2004). Helpers increase long-term but not short-term productivity in cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits. Behavioral Ecology 15: 1-10. doi:10.1093/beheco/arg091
13. Russell, A. F., Hatchwell, B. J. (2001). Experimental evidence for kin-biased helping in a cooperatively breeding vertebrate. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 268: 2169-2174. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1790
14. Sharp, S. P., McGowan, A., Wood, M. J. A., Hatchwell, B. J. (2005). Learned kin recognition cues in a social bird. Nature 434: 1127-1130. doi:10.1038/nature03522
15. Hatchwell, B. J., Gullett, P. R., Adams, M. J. (2014). Helping in cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits: a test of Hamilton's rule. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 369: 20130565. doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0565
16. BTO. Nest boxes for birds. BTO, Helping birds. Accessed 10 October 2026. Source
17. UK Parliament (1981). Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1. Accessed 7 October 2026. Source
18. UK (1985). The Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985, article 4. Accessed 7 October 2026. Source
19. McGowan, A., Hatchwell, B. J., Woodburn, R. J. W. (2003). The effect of helping behaviour on the survival of juvenile and adult long-tailed tits Aegithalos caudatus. Journal of Animal Ecology 72: 491-499. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2656.2003.00719.x
20. Hatchwell, B. J., Ross, D. J., Fowlie, M. K., McGowan, A. (2001). Kin discrimination in cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 268: 885-890. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1598
21. Gaston, A. J. (1973). The ecology and behaviour of the Long-tailed Tit. Ibis 115: 330-351. doi:10.1111/j.1474-919x.1973.tb01974.x
22. RSPB. Long-tailed Tit. RSPB Birds A-Z. Accessed 10 October 2026. Source