The Blue Tit Saga

Common birds; exactly what they say on the tin.

"Common, adjective; occurring, found, or done often; prevalent."

Well, one of Britain's most common garden birds is the blue tit. The favourite of many British people who own a garden. Cheeky, adaptable and just plain cute, these birds are hard to miss, and easy to attract to any garden across the country.

However, for years me and my mum have failed to attract this bird to our garden. It seems impossible to think: all these little birds need is some shelter, and some peanuts (obviously simplified, it isn't quite as easy as that, but still very easy). But yet even though next door's garden had a tall conifer tree, we offered food which we changed weekly, we lived near to a field with a fenced off forest that the birds could live in themselves without much disturbance, and bushes to hide from predators (which, to me, was an ideal habitat for any garden bird) the perky little cyanistes caeruleus' to our garden.

At that point, I will admit I honestly considered giving up bird watching, since somehow we couldn't even attract one of the commonest birds to our garden.

It was then my mum came up with a plan. Well, not really a plan, just a decision to perhaps spice things up a little in the garden and get fat birds flapping around.

"Instead of changing the food weekly, perhaps we could add food every two days?"

I felt like a complete idiot. How could I, the only person I knew who I considered quite knowledgeable on British birds, not have thought of the plan before? I quickly brushed the thought aside and went along with mum's idea. The house sparrows flocked even more to our garden. Starlings barged into the way, sending any small birds darting for cover, to get in on the meal. Woodpigeons pecked at the ground below, scoffing up any dropped seed they could get their hands - or bills - on. I grinned at the dinner party that was occurring outside my window.

One day, while I was on my iPad, my mum called me to get downstairs immediately, but be quiet and slow. I thought to myself, why on Earth would I need to come down so fast yet so slow?

But when I did, it was well worth the wait. Mum pointed frantically at the window, whisper shouting.

"Look, look! That bird there - that's definitely NOT a sparrow," stuttered mum. "Look, it has whiter cheeks. The tail's longer too! Perhaps it's a great tit? I think so-"

"Blue tit."

"Pardon?"

"That's a blue tit. Without a doubt."

"What? Isn't it a great tit? It looks around the same size."

"Look at that yellow breast, and blue head. And look at that sparrow over there, compare the sizes. The blue tit is smaller."

I flicked through my bird book and checked the sizes of the house sparrow and the blue tit.

"Hey, look. See? The blue tit is around eleven centimetres, yet the house sparrow is around fourteen!"

After sighing at the bird flying away, and just resisting the temptation  to cheer when we returned, we decided to keep watching the window from then on.

That blue tit marked the start of our bird café. The local collared dove(s?) sat on top of the bird table as a perch and went into it, nibbling. We might have (though I doubt it) even saw a long tailed tit. Robins came along too.



But in my opinion the blue tit was the best of them all, and we were all concerned for it's survival.