ATTRACTING VISITORS TO THE GARDEN

The ‘true’ tits, such as Great, Blue and Coal tits, are regular and frequent visitors to gardens, visiting bird tables and hanging feeders to eat nuts and seeds. They also readily take to nest boxes: artificial substitutes for natural nest holes in trees. Long-tailed tits were once only infrequent visitors to gardens and were rarely, if ever, seen on bird feeders. But during the past decade or so, that has all changed, and though they are not seen as often as the other tits, they do sometimes cling to hanging feeders to get at the contents. Another way to attract Long-tailed tits to the garden is to allow an area to ‘go wild’, especially if there are brambles and other dense, thorny plants, where the birds can build their nest out of the way of passing predators.