Great tit

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus gave the great tit its current name in 1758. The name joins the Latin parus, a tit, with maior, meaning larger. Francis Willughby had already used the name in the 17th century. The older English word for the group is titmouse, which goes back to the 14th century. It puts together mase, an old word for a small bird, and tit, which means small. Dutch mees and German Meise come from the same root.

Fifteen subspecies are recognised today. The nominate form runs from the Iberian Peninsula to the Amur Valley. Four of the subspecies live only on islands. Until 2005 the species also covered birds from southern and eastern Asia. DNA work split those birds off as the cinereous tit and the Japanese tit. The Turkestan tit stayed inside the great tit, though not every authority agrees.

Evolution and relatives

The major group split from the southern and eastern groups about 1.5 million years ago. The Turkestan birds parted from the rest about half a million years later. Where the western and eastern forms meet in the Amur Valley, hybrids are rare. That rarity suggests a barrier to breeding between the two groups.

Parus once covered most members of the family, and a split came in 1998. The great tit stayed in Parus, alongside the blue tits in the same lineage. That lineage does not hoard food, unlike the other main group of tits. The closest relatives outside the old subspecies are the white-naped and green-backed tits. Hybrids with the blue tit and the coal tit are very rare. Genetic work points to a bottleneck and then a fast spread after the last ice age.

Appearance

The bird is 12.5 to 14 centimetres long, which is large for a tit. An adult weighs about 18.5 grams. The crown is bluish black and the cheeks and ear coverts are white. The breast is bright lemon yellow, crossed by a broad black line from the bib to the vent. The back is green with an olive tint, and the wing carries a white bar. The outer tail feathers carry white tips on a bluish grey tail.

The female wears the same pattern in duller colours. Her belly stripe is narrower, and it is sometimes broken. Young birds look like the female, with a browner nape and a greyer rump. Carotenoids from food set the strength of the yellow, so a bright male has fed well. Females prefer a male with a wide belly stripe. Breast colour also tracks sperm quality in the male.

Habitat and range

The great tit lives across almost all of Europe. Iceland and northern Scandinavia are the gaps. In North Africa the bird lives in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The range runs east through the Middle East and Central Asia to the Amur Valley. GBIF records the species in 101 countries, and that count includes escapes.

Open deciduous woodland suits it best, along with mixed forest, woodland edge and gardens. In a dense forest the bird keeps to clearings. Birds of northern Siberia occupy the boreal taiga. North African birds use oak forest, cedar stands and even palm groves. Eastern birds favour willow and birch woodland along rivers.

The species does not usually migrate, even in the north of the range. A pair holds its territory through the year. Young birds move away from the parents, though rarely far. In a bad winter a flock of a thousand birds may push south and west. Releases near Cincinnati in the 1870s failed to take hold. Birds released in Kazakhstan in the early 1960s did establish themselves.

Diet and feeding

In summer the great tit eats insects and spiders picked off leaves. Larger prey includes grasshoppers, beetles, earwigs, flies, bees, snails and woodlice. Parents prefer caterpillars for the chicks, because caterpillars are rich in protein. One study measured up to 50 per cent less caterpillar damage in orchards where the birds fed. Young nestlings also get a run of spiders early in their growth.

In autumn and winter the diet turns to seeds and berries. Beech and hazel seeds are common items. The bird takes peanuts, seed and scraps from a garden table. In a hard winter a great tit may eat 44 per cent of its body weight in sunflower seeds. Great tits join mixed flocks of small birds to forage through the winter.

A big seed gets held under one or both feet and struck with the bill. By that method the bird opens a hazelnut in about twenty minutes. Adults knock the heads off large insects before they pass them to a chick. They also pull the gut out of a caterpillar, because the tannins in it slow chick growth. In 2009 great tits were reported killing hibernating pipistrelle bats and eating the brains.

Behaviour and social life

Pairs set up a breeding territory in late January. They defend it from late winter into spring. A pair that raises a brood usually keeps the same territory the next year. A female whose nest was robbed is likely to move somewhere else. Outside the breeding season the birds mix into flocks with other small species.

The great tit learns by insight rather than by trial and error. In England the birds learned to open the foil caps of doorstep milk bottles. That trick was first noted in 1921 and spread fast over the next two decades. Birds have also used a conifer needle to pull a larva out of a hole. Tool use of that kind appears to be rare among small songbirds.

The species fights the pied flycatcher for nest boxes and sometimes kills the male flycatcher. Deaths rise when the two species nest at the same time. Warmer springs have pushed their nesting dates closer together. A great tit may eat the brain of a flycatcher it has killed.

Communication and senses

The great tit has up to 40 types of call and song. Both sexes use the same calls, but the male is far more vocal. Soft single notes such as pit or chit keep a pair in contact. A loud tink serves as an alarm and as a challenge to a rival. The best known song sounds like the word teacher, repeated over and over. People often compare it to a squeaky wheelbarrow wheel.

Calls vary from region to region across the range. Birds from the two Asian species do not react to the calls of European great tits. One idea holds that a wide repertoire makes a territory sound crowded to a rival. Birds with more calls tend to rank higher and to breed better. In noisy towns the birds sing at a higher pitch than in quiet places.

Reproduction and life cycle

The great tit is a cavity nester and usually chooses a hole in a tree. A wall or a rock face will also serve, and a nest box works well. The female builds the nest from plant fibre, grass, moss, hair, wool and feathers. Most breeding falls between January and September, and in Europe it starts after March. Laying is timed so that the chicks meet the peak of the caterpillars.

A clutch usually holds five to twelve eggs, and it can reach 18. The eggs are white with red spots. A late clutch and a second brood are both smaller than a first clutch. Island birds lay fewer eggs, and the eggs are larger. The female alone incubates for 12 to 15 days, and the male feeds her. A sitting female hisses at anything that disturbs her.

Chicks hatch blind and without feathers. Their nape is yellow and reflects ultraviolet light, which draws the parents to them. That patch turns white at the first moult, at about two months old. Both parents feed the brood, giving each chick 6 to 7 grams of food a day. The young leave the nest after 16 to 22 days and feed themselves eight days later.

Pairs are socially monogamous, but many broods hold chicks from another male. One German study found outside fathers in 40 per cent of nests. Second broods produce weaker chicks with lower survival. Young birds scatter from their birthplace, which lowers the chance of inbreeding. The oldest wild great tit on record reached 15.4 years.

Predators and threats

The Eurasian sparrowhawk hunts adult great tits. Chicks from a second brood face the greatest risk from that hawk. Great spotted woodpeckers break into nests, above all in some designs of nest box. Grey squirrels raid nests in Britain. Least weasels take eggs, chicks and sitting adults.

The hen flea is very common in the nests of great tits and blue tits. A biting louse described in 1981 also lives on the birds. Two kinds of beetle live in the nest and eat the fleas. Those beetles breed only in the warmth a brooding bird provides. No threat acts on the species as a whole, and declines are local.

Population and conservation

The IUCN classes the great tit as Least Concern. The world total is estimated at 300 million to 1,100 million birds. The range covers about 32.4 million square kilometres. Numbers have fallen in some places with poor habitat. The size of the range and the size of the population outweigh those local losses.

The bird has spread north into Scandinavia and Scotland. It has also spread south into Israel and Egypt. Breeding success is best where forest cover is undisturbed. Even so, the species is common in towns and cities. One estimate put the breeding population of Sheffield at about 17,000 birds. iNaturalist holds 247,146 observations of the species.

Relationship with humans

The great tit is a favourite at garden feeders. People enjoy the acrobatics it performs on a hanging nut feeder. Great tits in Britain may carry longer bills now than they did in the 1970s. A longer bill probably suits a garden feeder better. The bird moves into a nest box without hesitation.

That habit made the species a standard subject in bird research. Researchers have used it above all to study clutch size and other life history traits. One search of the literature found 1,349 papers on the species over three decades. Few wild birds appear to have been watched in such detail. People once proposed releasing great tits in the United States to control codling moths. That plan was never carried out.

In culture and myth

In English country belief the saw sharpening call warned of coming rain. The name titmouse comes from an English word for a small bird plus a word for small. The spelling moved towards mouse in the 16th century. In North America the same family is called the chickadees, after the alarm call.

The milk bottle story is probably the best known modern tale about this bird. British doorstep deliveries gave the tits cream under a foil cap. The trick spread across the country within two decades. People often quote it as a sign that a wild animal may learn from another.

One idea about the many calls is named after the novel Beau Geste. In that story a soldier props up dead men to make a fort look defended. The many calls of one bird may work in the same way on a rival. In garden lore across Britain the great tit seems to stand for the bold visitor at the feeder.