Why don’t great tits visit the feeder?

Text  Margus Ots, www.eoy.ee
Photo Arne Ader
Translation Liis
Great tits at feeder
 
In the strong cold in the beginning of January many people set up fat balls for the tits but nobody came to eat. Why?
 
The answer is simple –in severe cold birds stay near the familiar feeding places and will not use energy unnecessarily in searching for new ones. When the weather becomes less severe the great tits again go on longer searches and will discover new feeders.
Since great tits move around between good feeding places it is not easy to estimate how many birds actually visit one feeder during a day. For instance on eating sunflower seeds the great tit takes the seed in the beak and flies a little distance away to a shrub or tree to eat the seed. One might be able to keep track of 3-5 such tits going back and forth. But only marking or ringing the birds would give an idea of the real number of birds.
 
Often it turns out that instead of a few birds 20-30 of them pass a feeder  in one day, in the beginning of winter even 40-50. During the whole of the winter the feeder is visited by several hundred great tits. During the second half of winter the number of great tits coming to the feeder decreases because all birds do not survive the winter.
 
More information about helping tits in winter is on the Estonian Ornithological Society’s website: LINK
 
 


 

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