Help keep these great birds on song this winter

ONE of our most unappreciated birds is the great tit, a regular in your garden and local woodland.

While robins, blackbirds, goldfinches, wrens, and even blue tits get all the publicity, people hardly ever mention the great tit.

They deserve to be in the limelight much more, mainly because they make so much noise – a bit of ‘look at me!’

In fact, the great tit has an estimated 70 songs in its hit-list with the most famous being the ‘teacher, teacher’ call which you will recognise if you listen carefully on your country walks.

The reason the birds have so many different songs is thought to be as a brilliant way to deter predators, who will listen to the one-bird orchestra and think there are a few of them.

And they are loud, which might put off some of the shy birds of prey and cats in the area.

Many of the songs are kings of whistles and tweets, sometimes they can sound like a bicycle pump.

Great tits are definitely one of the stars of the dawn chorus and I certainly love to hear them as I wander along the river bank close to our house.

As its name suggests it is one of the UK’s largest tits, nesting in all sorts of places in spring – we had one nesting in traffic cone close to the office a couple of years ago.

In winter it will be a regular visitor to your bird table and feeder and it can be an acrobatic bird when it is looking for its dinner.

Great tits also like to hunt out spiders and insects among the smaller branches and leaves in the woods.

It is larger than the blue tit and has a black head, white cheeks, green back, yellow belly and black stripe down its breast.

Males have a broad black stripe on the belly, whereas females have a much thinner black stripe.

That stripe on the male proves its status and whether it will be a good choice as a father.

The wider the stripe, the more attractive the male is to females.

I used to have striped jumpers but they never had that sort of effect.

Great tits increased by about five per cent in the 70s and are now rivalling blue tits in many areas, including the North West.

If you are first starting out in bird watching, your identification skills have to start somewhere and you can impress your family if you can name birds by their song.

Great tits are a great way to start and it is amazing how few people know that raucous ‘teacher, teacher!’ is such a recognisable bird in their garden.

When someone tells me ‘I only have the usual birds in my garden,’ I throw my hands in the air and tell them some of the marvellous facts about those fascinating birds.

We should cherish our most familiar birds as part of our family and, as the weather gets colder, remember to put out some food and water.

Everything we do for our wildlife is paid back in bucketloads in raising our spirits every day.