Blue tit

The blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) is a passerine songbird in the family Paridae. It is 10.5 to 12 cm (4.2 to 4.8 inches) long.

Blue tit
Chirping sound
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Paridae
Genus:	Cyanistes
Binomial name
Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Cyanistes caeruleus

The blue tit is a widespread and common resident breeder. It lives throughout temperate and subarctic Europe and western Asia in deciduous or mixed woodlands. It is a resident bird; most do not migrate.

Behaviour

Blue and great tits form mixed winter flocks, and the former are perhaps the better gymnasts on the slender twigs. A blue tit will often ascend a trunk in short jerky hops, imitating a treecreeper. As a rule the bird roosts in ivy or evergreens, but in hard weather will shelter in a hole. Blue tits are very agile and can hang from almost anywhere.

The blue tit has an average life expectancy of 1.5 years [1]

Diet

Eating peanuts from a garden bird feeder

The blue tit is a destroyer of pests. It is fond of young buds of various trees, and may pull them to bits in the hope of finding insects. No species, however, destroys more coccids and aphids, the worst foes of many plants. It also eats leaf miner grubs and green tortrix moths (Tortricidae). Seeds are eaten, as with all this family.

Learning

An interesting example of culturally transmitted learning in birds was the phenomenon dating from the 1960s of blue tits teaching one another how to open traditional British milk bottles with foil tops, to get at the cream underneath. This behaviour has declined recently because of the replacement of doorstep delivery by supermarket purchases of milk, and by hard-topped containers instead of the old bottles.

Other websites

• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (Blue tit)
• Blue tit videos, photos & sounds Archived 2016-04-04 at the Wayback Machine on the Internet Bird Collection.