Tits
The material for endless schoolboy jokes, the family of birds called tits drive their name from the Old English term ‘titmose’ – ‘tit’ meaning small and ‘mose’ being derived from the Germanic word for a bird, ‘mäse’, over time it became corrupted to ‘titmouse’. So it literally means ‘little bird’, despite that they will be forever the grist to the humour mill.
If you check out the tits on the RSPB website they say that there are 6 species of them in the UK; Blue, Coal, Crested, Great, marsh and willow tit. Curiously they leave out the Long Tailed Tit, so the total is more accurately seven.
Tits in the Garden
Our gardens are most likely to be graced by the Great, Blue and Coal Tits, but certainly around our way in Cambridgeshire the Long Tailed Tit is a common presence in the garden. Just the other day one was trying to pick a fight with its reflection in the patio door. These gregarious creatures hang out in gangs, you’ll hear them before you see them, advancing along a hedgerow like a cloud of chattering school kids let out of choir practice early, all musical banter and endless energy.
As a kid I remember my mother being locked in an endless battle to get the milk off the doorstep before the blue tits pecked through the foil cap to get at the cream. The current generations of blue hatted opportunists are missing that pleasure in the plastic wrapped world that we live in.
Blue and great tits will readily make a home in a nestbox, make sure you position it over two metres from the ground and facing north or east to avoid the hottest sunlight and prevailing weather. The parents exist in a frenzied state of delivering food and removing poo until the chicks fledge. You might be treated to the sight of the youngsters taking to the wing, a blue blur as they throw themselves into the void beyond their cosy wooden nursery.
Cover pic: Adobe Stock
