Plant guide by bird

Plants for Tufted Titmice

Plants for tufted titmice split by season: in summer titmice eat mainly insects — caterpillars, beetles, ants, wasps — and otherwise seeds, nuts and berries including acorns and beech nuts, always choosing the largest seeds they can ¹.

Titmice live in deciduous or mixed woods with a dense canopy and many tree species ¹, so the plant list is mostly trees. Growing facts are from the Wildflower Center [3–7], the native-plant case is Audubon's ².

Tufted titmouse — plants for tufted titmice supply nuts, large seeds and nest cavities — Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Plants for tufted titmice: nut trees and big seeds

American beech, whose nuts are among the most important wildlife foods ³, is the titmouse tree on this site; an oak beside it supplies the acorns ¹ and, per Audubon, over 500 caterpillar species ². Titmice prefer sunflower seeds at feeders and hoard shelled seeds in bark crevices within about 130 feet ¹ — common sunflower grown in the yard ⁴ feeds the same habit, and rough-barked trees hold the cache.

Cavities and cover

Titmice nest in cavities but cannot excavate their own, using natural holes and old woodpecker holes, and their dependence on dead wood is a reason to leave dead trees standing where it is safe ¹. Paper birch rots into cavities woodpeckers open ⁵; eastern red cedar gives winter cover ⁷; Virginia creeper's winter fruit is taken by nuthatches and chickadees, the titmouse's flock-mates ⁶. A nest box with a predator guard, put up before spring, substitutes for the missing snag ¹.

Why native plants first

Native plants are those that occur naturally in the region where they evolved, and Audubon calls them the ecological basis on which birds depend: without them and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds cannot survive ². The scale matters — a native oak supports over 500 species of caterpillars where a ginkgo hosts five, and it takes more than 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees ². Most nursery landscaping plants are alien species, so choosing natives is the single landscaping decision with the clearest effect on bird populations ².

The alternative is what most yards already have. Audubon notes that manicured lawn now covers over 40 million acres of the United States as a green monoculture, that the traditional suburban lawn carries on average ten times more chemical pesticide per acre than farmland, and that the continental U.S. has lost 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to sprawl ². Every bed of natives that replaces turf is habitat that lawn cannot be, and long-lived native trees such as oaks and maples also store carbon ².

Check the native range before buying: the Wildflower Center record for this species lists the states and provinces where it occurs naturally ³, and Audubon's zip-code native plant database narrows that to your area and the bird groups each plant attracts ². Once established, native plants generally need little maintenance and far less water than lawn, and they do not need the pesticides that make a yard poor bird habitat ².

More plant guides

Canadian Serviceberry →American Holly →American Beech →Cardinal Flower →Trumpet Honeysuckle →American Elderberry →Flowering Dogwood →Winterberry →Native plants for birds →Berry plants for birds →Seed plants for birds →Nectar plants for birds →Shelter plants for birds →

Frequently asked questions

What plants attract tufted titmice?

Nut trees — beech and oak — plus sunflower for large seeds and old trees or a nest box for cavities ¹³.

Do tufted titmice use nest boxes?

Yes — they cannot excavate their own cavity, so a box with a predator guard put up well before the breeding season attracts a pair ¹.