When I am feeling blue

With a cobalt cap, white cheeks and tiny wings, the blue tit might be a picture of songbird sweetness, but its morals leave much to be desired, says Stephen Moss

- Stephen Moss

WHETHER you live in a town or in the heart of the countryside, chances are that blue tits stop by your bird feeders. Together with the robin, blackbird and wren, the species is a regular garden visitor, with the British Trust for Ornithology’s Garden Birdwatch recording it in roughly 85% of sur- veyed gardens, across all seasons. Small, perky and brightly coloured, it is also one of the easiest birds to identify, with its distinctive blue cap, white cheeks and yellow breast. Only 4½in long, it weighs less than half an ounce, between a £1 and a £2 coin.

As are many other resident birds, blue tits are very sedentary: they rarely travel more than 10km (a little more than six miles) from where they were born, although, occasionally, birds do flee hard winter weather on the Continent and turn up in eastern Britain. What they lack in long-distance flying, however, they make up in energy: they are constantly active, because, being a small bird, they need to eat between one-quarter and one-third of their body weight every single day in order to survive, especially during the short and chilly days of winter. Outside the breeding season, they often travel in mixed flocks with other small songbirds, maximising their chances of finding food.