We've recently done something strangely cathartic. We found ourselves actually coming out, proclaiming to the world that we are out and proud “pre-twitchers”. A weight has been lifted from our shoulders – we have discovered birds – and we are no longer reticent or fearful of expressing our preference to the world.
Of course birds, in all their glory, remain a mystery to us. But we’re keen to know more. Keen to know how to attract them, how to build a relationship with them, how to protect them, how to get them to like us so much that we’ll have them eating out of our hands. We’re already wondering how we can get them to move in and raise a family with us – are we moving too fast? Are we being too eager? (Are we getting déjà vu?)
Throwing ourselves with gusto into our newfound passion, we have been working hard at our pre-twitcher-ism and have found you some little snippets of information about the blue tit.
- Did you know that a blue tit can live up to 21 years?
- It is estimated that there are roughly 3.5 million pairs of blue tits in the UK alone.
- The blue tit is a resident bird – i.e. it generally doesn’t migrate.
- It is estimated that about 15 million blue tits ‘winter’ in the UK.
- Blue tits have on average 7 chicks per nest.
- Each blue tit chick is usually fed about 100 times a day.
- Blue tits are more than happy to avail themselves of nest boxes so site one in your garden now! (We tried this, just to see, and it’s true! We have a couple of blue tits setting up home in our pristine first-time-buyer-nest-box right now – we might well become bona fide twitchers yet!)
- The same pair of blue tits is likely to use our new nesting box (their new home) for years to come.
- Blue tits eat more aphids and other such plant destroying bugs than any other species, so they’re good for your garden too! They also love berries, insects, spiders, caterpillars, grubs, moths, (…the list goes on and on), and have a liking for peanuts and sunflower seeds so are also frequent visitors to bird tables and feeders.
- It was the blue tit that was the secret milk bottle top destroyer of the 1960s.
There aren’t very many places in life where you can revel in the use of the word tit without fear of some reprisal or other but twitcher-dom is definitely one of them. In fact there are so many tits flying around our twitcher world that we feel a bit mean concentrating on the blue tit alone, so to assuage our guilt a little we’ve also come up with a little test for you, just to see how well you know your tits!
These are 4 tits that are commonly found in UK gardens:
Can you correctly name them??
First published: May 06
