Blue Tit

Blue tits are one of the most attractive and easily recognisable garden birds in the UK, thanks to their colourful plumage of blue, yellow, white and green. This is a common wild bird, as 98% of British gardens report seeing blue tits during the winter. This could be due to Tits preferring to travel in flocks during the cold season to scout for better food sources. A feeder with four or five blue tits at any one time could be feeding 20 or more.

Both adult female and male blue tits have a small blue crown with a white face and a black eye stripe. They also have yellow underparts and a bluish-green back, blending into a brighter blue at the wings. Even though both sexes have a similar colour plumage, females have a slightly duller appearance, which makes it easy to differentiate them from males. Juvenile blue tits will have considerably lighter and paler plumage with no blue crown or white cheeks. 

Blue tits can typically live up to three years, but almost two-thirds of young ones do not survive their first year. This could be due to many factors, such as the destruction of their nesting sights, disease spread, and predator attacks. The maximum age for blue tits recorded from bird ringing is just over ten years.

Most blue tits prefer to stay near where they hatched as chicks, but some individuals do migrate. Some of the blue tits you see in winter might have hatched or bred elsewhere in northern Europe and are escaping the cold. Come spring, these migrant blue tits will return to their homeland.

Blue tits are highly active feeders and easy to please, as they'll eat just about any bird food, including insects, seeds, suet treats, and nuts. They can eat up to 100 times a day, so if you regularly put out food for them, they will frequently return to your garden when they get hungry or need to feed their nestlings. It's always best to opt into using good quality food as this won't come with any fillers and will provide the best nutrients and high-energy sources to promote optimal health in blue tits. Below is a variety of bird food that blue tits will readily enjoy.

You can find blue tits nesting in any crevices, including rot holes in trees, cracks in old builds, and old woodpecker nests. They are also partial to man-made holes and will eagerly take up residents in nest boxes you put up in your outdoor space. They prefer nest boxes with a 26mm entrance hole positioned 6-7 feet off the ground. Below are a selection of nest boxes blue tits will happily take up residency in. 

Blue tits will waste no time when the breading season kicks in and will begin building their nest as early as March. This allows them to synchronise breeding so that the hatchlings coincide with the peak of natural food availability.

Though the majority of blue tits begin nesting in March, there have been records showing that some blue tits chose to get a head start and begin as early as January. There are even blue tits that will go as long as late May until they start building a nest. This untimely manner could result from climate change and natural food sources being delayed or unseasonably early. This gives some blue tits an advantage to nest out of sync with the rest as they don't have to share as much food.

Female blue tits usually lay 10 - 12 eggs per brood throughout April and early May. They'll typically have one - two broods a year. If they survive to old age, blue tits will have between two - six broods and can lay as many as 72 eggs in a lifetime. 

The incubation period can last up to 15 days with each clutch. To keep the eggs warm, the female will pluck feathers from her abdomen to create a bare patch (this is called a brood patch). Even though her partner will deliver food to her, th female will still have to leave the eggs for short periods to feed.

After roughly two weeks, the blue tit eggs will be ready to hatch naked and blind. As they are vulnerable to the cold, their mother will continue to sit on them to keep them warm when she is not out finding them food. Both parents will continue to feed the hatchlings until they are ready to fledge. 

Once the young blue tits are 18-21 days old, they will be ready to fledge. Their parents will wait for them outside the nesting box and call out to the fledglings to encourage them out. The chicks will poke their head out of the entrance for a few days until they build the courage to venture into the world. When the young blue tits are ready, they will glide out of the nest box to the nearest nest box or surface. They will stay with mum and dad, who will continue to feed them until the fledglings can fend for themselves. 

Whilst it's a common misconception that fledglings can't judge the size of their meal and can choke on large pieces of food, it's always a good idea to minimise this risk entirely by offering out small bites of bird food that is designed for fledglings in mind. Here are some of our recommendations for fledgling-friendly, springtime bird foods:

As our blue tits don't usually migrate in winter, they'll stay put in the UK and look for dry shelter to keep warm. Nest boxes and roosting pockets are an ideal place for blue tits to relax as it protects them from harsh weather conditions and predator attacks.