The Great Tit
Another of the common garden birds is the Great Tit (Parus Major). With its yellow breast and belly, black cap, throat and breast line and the white cheeks, it’s unmistakable. Like the Blue Tit, it changes diet according to season and becomes one of the most frequent visitors at the feeder and the bird table during winter.
It is very fond of sunflower seeds, which are rich in oil. If you grow sunflowers in your garden, you can take the entire flower and dry it when the seeds have developed. Then, during winter you can hang the dried flower in a tree or a bush and enjoy the sight of the Great Tit, amongst others, visiting the flower, pick a seed and fly off to eat it in a nearby bush.
These small birds are likely to be chased off the bird table by sparrows, finches and other larger birds. And stripping a sunflower seed is a task that takes both time and concentration, leaving the Tit vulnerable to attack from the Sparrow Hawk. All the Tit species – be it Great-, Blue-, Crested-, Coal- or Marsh Tits – that come to the bird table have solved both problems by just picking a single seed, fly off to eat it elsewhere and then return for another one.














