Chickadees and Allies

Poecile is a genus of birds in the tit family Paridae. It contains 15 species, which are distributed across Europe, Asia, and North America; the European and Asian species are known as tits, and the North American species as chickadees. In the past, most authorities retained Poecile as a subgenus within the genus Parus, but treatment as a distinct genus, initiated by the American Ornithologists Union, is now widely accepted. This is supported by mtDNA cytochrome b sequence analysis.

The genus Poecile was described by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1829. Kaup included two species in the genus, marsh tit Poecile palustris and coal tit P. ater; the type species was subsequently designated as the marsh tit by English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1842 (with coal tit now in the genus Periparus). The name Poecile was derived by Kaup from the Ancient Greek adjective ποικίλος, poikilos ("multicolored"); the related word ποικιλίς, poikilis, is recorded by Aristotle as the name of a small bird, sometimes identified with the goldfinch. It had traditionally been treated as feminine, giving name endings such as cincta; however, this was not specified by Kaup, and under the ICZN the genus name must therefore be treated by default as masculine, giving name endings such as cinctus.