The great tit is a very mobile bird the size of a sparrow, leading a sedentary lifestyle. The bird is distributed in mixed and deciduous forests of Europe, Asia and North Africa. This active bright bird can often be found in human habitats: in gardens, parks, forest parks.
Description
The great tit or big tit, Latin name Parus major, is a fairly common bird from the passerine order. Belongs to the tit family. It is considered the largest representative of the genus in Russia.
When describing the great tit, first of all, the most noticeable external features should be noted. The bird has bright plumage, differing from other birds with a yellow belly and a wide black stripe from breast to tail in males, called by many a tie.
The top of the head is covered with a kind of black cap, shimmering with a blue metallic sheen. There is a yellowish-white spot on the back of the head, the cheeks are bright white and noticeable. There is a black strip around the neck, the throat and chest are also black with a bluish tint.
The back has a yellow-greenor bluish-gray feather color with a hint of olive color on the shoulders, and the wings and tail are bluish with a thin white transverse stripe.
In the photo of the great tit, the female is very similar to the male, only the plumage is duller, and the black color on the breast and head is more of a dark gray tint. The black collar and belly band are much thinner and often interrupted. The undertail is a brighter white than the male.
Young chicks are more like females, but their cap is brown or even brownish-olive, and the spot on the back of the head is blurry and much smaller.
The species of great tit has up to 30 subspecies. They differ in the geography of their habitat and differ in shades of color on the back, uppertail, breast, sides, as well as the intensity of the color of white plumage.
Great Tit Flight
The flight of this little bird is an interesting observation. In the sky, the titmouse flies quickly, but does not expend extra energy. The flapping of the wings only happens a couple of times during takeoff, but then, after climbing, the fun begins.
After gaining altitude, this bird rushes down, describing long gentle parabolas, clinging to the air currents with its wings and tacking into them, does not allow unnecessary flapping of its wings, significantly saving energy. At the same time, the entire flight takes place at a decent speed.
Voice and trills
The great tit is capable of playing up to 40 different trills, moreover, the same individual cansimultaneously alternate up to five variations, differing in rhythm, pitch, timbre and number of syllables.
The male, of course, makes sounds much more actively. He is able to sing throughout the year, excluding the period of late autumn and early winter. It should be noted that each bird has its own unique intonation.
The great tit's trills are very reminiscent of the singing of a finch. However, in titmouse they are more sonorous. Most often, the chirp is used by these babies to communicate with their mate, as well as in times of danger.
In winter, the chants are quite monotonous: they either whistle softly, then they arrange a roll call, or they will raise a frightened chatter when they see danger. At this time of the year, titmouse trills are distinguished by two-syllable singing.
However, at the end of February, when spring has not yet arrived, but its arrival is already tangible and tangible, great tits become animated, and their songs turn into three-syllable trills. With each new week, the bird song becomes more diverse, longer, more melodic and louder.
Behavioral features
Everyone knows that the great tit has a restless mobile character, as if they inserted Energizer batteries at birth. In autumn, these birds gather in small flocks, which are formed from chicks grown during the season, their parents and several other families, and which number about 50 individuals.
With tits, you can often see representatives of completely different species. They calmly relate to such a neighborhood. But it happens to survive the winterquite difficult, and by the onset of spring, about a third of the birds die from hunger and cold.
Great tits are considered forest orderlies. One pair of these birds during the season when you have to feed the chicks saves about 40 trees in the garden from pests.
But during the mating season, the flock divides into pairs and controls a territory of about 50 m². The good-natured sociable titmouse turns into an angry and aggressive fury for the time of feeding offspring, driving out every single competitor from the reclaimed territory, where it will be easier to raise offspring in the future.
Nesting period
The great tit is mostly monogamous. The couple has been kept for several years in a row. Makes two clutches per season. The first falls on the end of April - the beginning of May, the second on June. The first clutch usually has 5 to 12 eggs, while the second clutch has a couple fewer eggs. The average egg size is 16-20 mm.
The male great tit (photo below) during courtship stays slightly higher than the female, jumps from branch to branch, wings and tail are slightly fluffy. He often takes off and again descends to the place where the future nest is supposed to be, depicting the feeding of a partner. The first mating trills of the male are heard in February.
The nest is arranged exclusively by the female, choosing a place for it in the hollow of a tree, at a height of 1.5 to 5 m. If there are no suitable trees, then the tit can nest even in an abandoned mouse hole, a crevice in a rock and other places, which the female finds quite secluded.
Moss, thin twigs, animal hair, cotton wool, threads, lichens, spider cocoons are used as building materials. The nest is obtained with a diameter of 40-60 mm and a depth of 40-50 mm. The eggs of the tit are white with a shiny shell and a lot of reddish-brown spots and specks.
Hatching chicks
The female sits tightly on the clutch for two weeks. All this time the male feeds her. Newly bred chicks are covered with gray fluff, the beak cavity of the babies is bright orange. Parents feed their offspring together. At the same time, about 7 g of food falls on each chick per day.
After 16-22 days in the nest, the chicks grow up and begin to fly, but remain dependent on their parents for another week. And the second brood keeps near the parents for up to 50 days, until the moment when the tits again flock in the fall. The lifespan of a great tit is about 15 years.
Features of food
If we talk about what the great tit eats, you need to understand that in different periods of life, the diet of birds varies. For example, during the mating season, small invertebrates and their larvae serve as food. Thus, these birds destroy a huge number of pests.
Also during this period, the diet includes caterpillars of butterflies, weevils, spiders, beetles, mosquitoes, midges and flies, bugs, aphids. Along with this, crickets, cockroaches, dragonflies and even bees are also eaten, in which tits prudently remove the sting. The chicks are mainly fed with butterfly caterpillars no less than 1 cm in size.
By and large,great tit - a bird (photo below) is an omnivore. In the autumn-winter period, she prefers plant foods. These can be beech and hazel seeds, grains of rye, corn, oats and wheat. If the bird lives to the north, then these are the fruits and seeds of firs, pines, lindens, elders, maples, mountain ash, shadberries, blueberries, hemp, sunflowers, etc.
The great tit does not stock up for the winter, but it gladly destroys the pantries of other birds. Often this bird does not shun and fell. It feeds on human-prepared feeders. May be happy to eat uns alted bacon, leftover cream from bags and even butter.
There are also known cases of predation in great tits. It kills, for example, bats and small birds by pecking out their brains.
The great tit is an unusual bird. Such a small baby is already so adapted to survive even in the harshest conditions.
