Cinereous Tit

The cinereous tit, or Asian tit, is a crestless tit with a grey back, a black hood, a white cheek patch, a white wing bar and white underparts with a broad black stripe down the centre. The female's central stripe is narrower and she is slightly duller. The tail is black with ashy edges and white tips and outer feathers. Its populations were formerly treated as subspecies of the great tit, which in the narrow sense has a greenish back and yellowish underparts (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is usually seen in pairs or small groups that sometimes join mixed-species feeding flocks, and it forages mainly by gleaning insects such as caterpillars. It ranges from parts of West Asia across South Asia to South-east Asia, and the Japanese tit is now included in it. In India it is resident across a very large range; SoIB 2023 finds its trends stable and rates it a Low conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).