This little garden bird, several of which I can hear calling to each other as I sit in the garden writing this, has always been one of my favourite birds. Back when I first got into birding, the Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruelus, internationally known as the Eurasian Blue Tit to distinguish it from the almost-identical African Blue Tit) was the one that, with its colourful blue and yellow plumage, really stood out among the sparrows, finches and starlings. I was thrilled whenever I saw one on the bird feeder then, and I still am now.
Perhaps it is this bird’s somewhat cheeky reputation; when I was a Young Ornithologist (back then, the RSPB’s youth wing gloried in the rather long-winded name of the Young Ornithologists Club, and had a very smart badge depicting a Kestrel) it was known to be in the habit of pecking at foil milk-bottle tops to get at the cream underneath, although I don’t recall ever seeing any evidence of this myself; the rising popularity of semi-skimmed milk in the 1980s put a stop to it (no cream to be had under the red foil caps) even before home milk deliveries were all but killed off in the early 1990s when supermarkets were finally allowed to sell the stuff.
Perhaps it’s also because the Blue Tit is a clever, adaptable bird (the milk-bottle top thing is an example of this more than cheekiness, from the bird’s point of view at least). Another birding memory from the 1980s is of a BBC TV documentary called Bird Brain of Britain in which a young Simon King showed how Blue Tits (and Great Tits as well) could solve simple puzzles in order to get food; for example, figuring out that if they tapped the top of a small box, a peanut would come out of the bottom.
It’s also one of few birds whose call I have always been able to recognise. I once had a cassette of bird calls and songs; I never got very far with it but the Blue Tit was the first one to be mentioned on the tape, so it stuck!
So yes, the Blue Tit. Definitely one of my favourite birds!
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