VIDEO: Smart great tits

 

 

In spring when I once again drop sunflower seeds into the soil an image of autumn appears – like the one in the video here. To this end the sunflowers grow: that the garden birds should have something to find in autumn.

 

 

The great tit is the biggest, most numerous and best known of our tits. It has been elected as the Bird of the Year for 2016.

 

We are used to seeing great tits nesting in spring-summer and visiting the birdfeeder in winter. The birds are actually busy in the gardens all year round but they need not be the same individuals throughout the year.  A part of our great tits move southwards in autumn. From September to November they will travel singly, in groups or in flocks as far as to France. The breeders from north arrive instead, but they look alike. Thus we do not know if the sunflower seeds are eaten by our own birds or strangers, but it really makes no difference.

 

The autumn migration of great tits coincides with a change in their behaviour, at least in my home garden. Already in mid-September rock wool floats steadily down from under the unfinished eaves of the house and the ”fake woodpeckers” tirelessly pick holes in the verge boards for weeks on end. Is it necessary to make such efforts when there are still enough insects moving about? I think this gang of great tits with their differing behaviour pattern and habits has arrived from somewhere else. Living near humans, great tits have learnt to be smart and have gone along with changes. For example in the middle of last century when the milk delivery people used to put milk bottles with thin tin foil caps on the steps outside the doors of still sleeping customers in early morning, great tits learnt to open them.  The trick of opening milk and cream bottles that started in one village soon spread over all England and finally resulted in the introduction of new tit-safe packages. The great tits busy in our large food distribution centres have however learnt to open packages for straw drinks skilfully, picking a hole with the beak just where the drinking straw normally is inserted…