The personable blue tit is one of Britain’s best loved garden birds
With vividly bright plumage and a personable nature, the tiny blue tit is one of our most recognisable garden birds. A widespread population of 3.5million pairs swells during winter, when blue tits arrive from mainland Europe in search of food and warmth, so they can be seen in almost every British garden. They’re so familiar, it’s easy to overlook their positively exotic appearance. If blue tits were rarer, people would travel a great distance to see one.
With a striking yellow breast, dazzling white cheeks, a black ‘bandit’ mask, multicoloured wings and a smart blue cap, it’s surely our most attractive garden resident. But the most fascinating aspect of their plumage is the colour blue itself. Blue isn’t just unusual, it’s the rarest pigment in nature – but the blue tit’s colour is created entirely by light interacting with keratin in the feathers, rather than any pigment contained within them. The blues we see are the work of schemochromes – colourless, sub-microscopic structures that create colour purely by the way in which they reflect light back to us.
One of the reasons blue tits are so popular is their fondness for nest boxes. These, alongside garden feeding, undoubtedly boost blue tit populations but their chicks still depend on caterpillars and other invertebrates during spring. Urban birds may therefore be at a disadvantage compared to blue tits in their natural woodland habitats, which are full of fat-rich prey. Adults will happily substitute their usual diet with our garden offerings and can be seen dangling acrobatically on a tree branch or feeder, their diagnostic jingly ‘sisi-siuurrrrr’ ringing out across the garden.
Blue tits may begin the hunt for a nest site during the very coldest months, though it’s typically not until late March that construction commences. Like other members of their family, they’ll use soft materials like moss, hair and feathers, cleverly weaving in spider silk to bind things together and adding herbs such as lavender as a natural disinfectant. Life for the adults is non-stop, flitting tirelessly and energetically around the garden to catch in excess of ten thousand insects within three weeks to rear their brood successfully.
For wildlife information and advice, contact the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s WildCall service: 01273 494777 (weekday mornings) or wildcall@sussexwt.org.uk who inadvertently treads on a neatly tied up little bag of delights. Another new phenomenon is the sight of the overflowing dedicated bins which is pretty much some dog owners saying to the rest of us ‘at least I went to the trouble of bagging it up and didn’t let Churchill do his business outside number 23’. This isn’t just a problem local to me as there is growing evidence that this issue impacts communities across the country – a poodemic if you will. Up and down this nation of dog lovers there have been similar reports of anti-social behaviour by owners who are either incapable of or unwilling to clean up after their pets.
One aggravating feature of this unpleasant comeback trend – dog dirt was very big in the 1980s – is when some owners think it is perfectly acceptable to hang filled up bags from the branches of trees, like they were some grizzly Christmas decoration.
Such is the problem in one part of
Scotland that an area popular with lazy dog walkers has been dubbed ‘the Hanging Gardens of Jobbylon’. Anybody who has watched even five minutes of a Billy Connolly performance will be familiar with the term ‘jobby’. There are many theories about why we are seeing noticeably more of this mess on our streets.
There is a school of thought that lockdown has brought about a new breed of dog owner, who doesn’t care about societal norms such as not leaving excrement on a public highway where some poor sap will come a cropper five minutes later. It’s true that there has been a huge surge in demand for dogs since the first lockdown, I’m not so sure as from the evidence I’ve seen locally it’s fully grown Irish Wolfhounds, if not baby elephants, that are the culprits, not dainty little pedigree pups. I am more inclined to go with the theory that some people who have long objected to cleaning up after their four-legged friend now feel able to get away with not doing so, given that there are fewer people about to challenge them.
Yes, councils do have the power to fine irresponsible dog owners but this is clearly not enough of a deterrent for a significant number who are confident that they won’t get caught or that their local authority has more important things to do right now.
People who turn a blind eye to their dog’s toilet habits are enemies of their neighbourhoods, many of which have been galvanised by a year of bad news. Taking pride in where you live is central to great community spirit but there is a malignant minority who thumb their noses, not to mention their dogs’ backsides, at the rest of us. We live in the genuine hope that the nightmare of the past year will be over before long but there are some unpleasant side effects that we might have to endure for years to come.