The nature of things

Crested and coal tit

FOR those who measure such things, it’s a rather exciting prospect that the great tit, a vocal, yellow-waistcoated charmer, has evolved a larger beak in the past few decades. It’s thought to be a direct response to the very British habit of creating convenient fast-food restaurants in our gardens, with birdfeeders full of seeds and nuts.

Could this also happen to the diminutive coal tit (bottom left and right)? As winter approaches, he can be persuaded to find an easy meal at the avian equivalent of Mcdonalds. Like the great tit, the coal has large white cheek patches, but it’s clearly a smaller bird, with an unmarked, buff undercarriage, a black cap on the head and a signature white nape patch on the back of the head.

Busy, hyperactive and inclined to dash back into the trees, where it may stash a small larder in convenient crevices, the coal tit is most comfortable in mixed and coniferous woodland and gardens with old trees.

The distinctively hatted crested tit (top left and right) requires a journey for most of us, being very widespread in the pine forests of Europe from Spain to Scandinavia, but confined in Britain chiefly to the Caledonian forest of Scotland’s Highlands. Here, he sees out winter probing old pines for spiders, insects and their larvae, tucked away in the chunky bark and clustered needles. KBH

Illustration by Bill Donohoe