What does a titmouse eat in summer and winter? A bird - a great tit: a description with photos, pictures and videos where it lives and winters, what a great tit looks like.

The tit is large or big, in Latin it sounds like Parus major - a cheerful, playful and agile bird from the tit family, detachment passeriformes. The length of an average bird is about 15 cm, the wing length is 8 cm, the tail length is 7 cm, the wingspan is from 20 to 26 cm, the tit weighs an average of 14 to 20 grams.

Black head and neck, white cheeks, olive top and yellow underside are the standard description of the titmouse. Some representatives of this family have a brighter color, others are paler. The bright yellow belly and the bluish hue of the wings and tail make the tit quite noticeable.
The tit feeds on small invertebrates (beetles, spiders, flies, mosquitoes, midges, butterflies, bees, cockroaches, dragonflies and crickets) and is a kind of forest orderly, destroying various pests. It also eats seeds and fruits of plants, especially in winter. For the winter, the tit does not make stocks, therefore, in winter, it does not sort out food and even eat carrion and almost any food from the feeders. At the same time, tits gather in small groups, roaming and looking for food.

A titmouse can make about forty variations of sounds and alternate song options that are different in rhythm and timbre, height and number of syllables and sounds. Males sing more often and more than females. It is interesting to watch the song communication of a pair of tits.

Where does the great tit live and winter.

Titmouse can be found almost anywhere on our planet. She lives in Europe everywhere except Iceland, and in the East and in Asia and in African countries and on the territory of Russia, excluding the Kola Peninsula. The tit is a sedentary bird and rarely roams. Chooses places to live in wooded areas near water bodies. The tit can live in any climatic conditions and almost never migrates, remaining to winter in a habitable place. It can be found in big cities in city squares, gardens and parks, on the outskirts of fields, near forest plantations and olive groves.

Recently, two completely different subspecies of the great tit have been identified: the gray tit, which lives in South Asia, and the eastern tit from eastern Asia.

Photo of great tit in the wild:

A photo. The great tit bathes.

A photo. Great tit on egg laying.

A photo. Tit and her offspring. Titmouse chicks.

Video film how the tit is in a hurry to build a nest

Video: “A tit is a big fight”

, reptiles (reptiles), birds, their nests, eggs and voices, and mammals (animals) and traces of their vital activity,
20 colored laminated key tables, including: aquatic invertebrates, diurnal butterflies, fish, amphibians and reptiles, wintering birds, migratory birds, mammals and their tracks,
4 pocket field determinant, including: inhabitants of water bodies, birds of the middle zone and animals and their traces, as well as
65 methodical benefits and 40 educational and methodological films on methodologies conducting research work in nature (in the field).

In the non-commercial online store of Ecological Center "Ecosystem" you can purchase the following methodical materials on ornithology:
computer(electronic) guide to birds of central Russia, containing descriptions and images of 212 bird species (bird drawings, silhouettes, nests, eggs and voices), as well as a computer program for identifying birds encountered in nature,

The titmouse is the closest relative of the well-known sparrow to all of us, it is very similar to it in appearance and habits, from a distance they can even be confused, but only from a distance, look at the photo, however, the children of the titmouse are a very beautiful bird. A bright yellow belly with a black "tie", a black and blue hat on the head, a black scarf on the neck, white cheeks, a yellow-green back, gray wings and a tail with blue. You're asking, where is the blue color in this description of the bird, Why is the bird called a titmouse.

The name of this bird, the titmouse, did not come from plumage, but from sonorous singing; And yet among the tits there are those who wear a blue cap and yellow and blue plumage, this is the blue titmouse. Her photo is at the bottom of this page. It is slightly smaller than the common tit, but in terms of the beauty of plumage it is not inferior to parrots, and why do we compare the tit with a sparrow, the fact is that they are from the same family of passerines, and also jump on the ground when feeding, like sparrows. At the same time, the plumage of the female common tit is duller than that of the male, and from afar they are easy to confuse.

But flying like a titmouse would be worth learning for all birds, as if flying, it rarely flaps its wings, saving strength, which a sparrow cannot do at all. And also tit like a sparrow eats furry caterpillars which other birds do not eat. Gardeners consider tits to be the best protectors of gardens.

One pair of tits living in a garden can protect up to 40 fruit trees, and the garden does not need any harmful chemicals. Per day the tit is able to clear the garden of 360 caterpillars, that is how many times she returns to the nest with chicks, the tit eats with pleasure slugs and various bugs, as well as their larvae.

In order for tit birds to settle in the garden, hang titmouse in the garden. Sinichnik is a round house, like a tree trunk, like a birdhouse, only the inlet is smaller.

However, the shape of the house for tits can be any, as long as the birds like it. Titmouse in the forest live in hollows made in trunks by woodpeckers, they themselves do not know how to make them, just remember children, titmouses need to be cleaned from old nests every year, tits do not settle in houses with old nests.

Tit, wintering bird or migratory.

Tit and sparrow in the winter at the feeder

tit bird settled, not migratory, living in the forest, at the end of autumn they move closer to people, to gardens and parks, where it is warmer and you can find food, by the way, so does the sparrow. In Russia, there is even such a sign, tits flew in, wait for the onset of cold weather, and the day on which tits flew into the city was called Titmouse Day, before it was even celebrated on November 12th.

Therefore, children in the winter of titmouse must be fed. What to feed titmouse?

Titmouse can be fed:

• sunflower seeds;
• pork fat - titmouse peck it with pleasure;
• boiled rice, buckwheat or barley groats;
• potatoes.

You can feed with bread, but you can’t feed only white bread and rolls of tits, because of the yeast contained in excess in white bread, they can die.

And the children of the tit are gullible, really they can be taught to take food from the palms? Of course you can, you just need to be patient. At the same time, the titmouse, having taken food from you, can take it to its friend, female or male, or to its adult children, which no other bird does. Surprisingly, the tit bird eats food very carefully, not when, without swallowing it whole, as, for example, a tit, taking a seed, presses it with its paw to a branch, pierces it with its beak and pecks out the flesh, gently pinching off pieces from the kernel.

If you are lucky and the tit sits on your hand, make a wish, if the pichuga chirps - everything that you have made will come true - this is a folk sign.

Can children consider a tit as a songbird.

This is a blue titmouse, she wears a blue cap.

Yes, she sings wonderfully. Specialists in the song of the tit distinguish up to 40 different variants of melodies. At the same time, the same titmouse can simultaneously alternate several versions of its song - knees, different in timbre and rhythm, pitch of sounds and the number of syllables in the song. The male bird sings better than the female, almost the whole year, except for the cold weather, when the birds are not up to songs.

Personally, I have a very touching story connected with the singing of a titmouse. The titmouse settled in our gutter, under the very roof in early spring. How beautifully she sang, you can’t describe in words, waking up early in the morning, I ran outside to listen to her trills, and I must say that my grandfather heard the singing of a titmouse four times already and was even late for work. Only one fine morning she disappeared, and on the asphalt in the yard the wind drove blue-yellow feathers.

Apparently mine was the culprit. And now, for many years now, I have not been able to get titmouse in the garden, which I just don’t do, the titmouse family bypasses my garden. The most interesting thing is that in childhood my father told me about the same story, only he was much younger than I am today, and at that time I was not even in the project.

Here's my advice kids - look at the photo of the tit bird and memorize well its description. Take care of the titmouse, they will repay you to the best of their ability, protect the garden, and will delight you with beautiful songs, and also give hope for the fulfillment of desires.

The great tit has perfectly adapted to the landscape created by man. This nimble bird is often seen near buildings, in gardens and city parks, and is hailed by people everywhere as a true ally in the fight against insect pests.
Habitat. It lives in Europe, Asia and North Africa.

Habitat.
The great tit lives in Europe, Asia and northern Africa. The southern border of its range runs through North Africa, Israel, Iran and Ceylon, and in the north it reaches the polar tundra. This bird can be found in the expanses of Eurasia from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Some tits live settled, and birds nesting in the north migrate for the winter to areas with a milder climate.

Species: Great Tit - Parus major.
Family: Titmouse.
Order: Sparrows.
Class: Birds.
Subtype: Vertebrates.

Did you know?
The Great Tit is the largest of all European tits.
During the day, the body temperature of the tit is 42 ° C, and at night it drops to 39 ° C. The heart of this pichuga beats at a frequency of 500 beats per minute, and with strong excitement, the contraction rate increases to 1000 beats per minute.
A tit eats more food per day than it weighs itself. A pair of tits that feed nine chicks delivers approximately 1,800 insects and larvae to their offspring daily. For the entire time they stay in the nest, the chicks eat about 15,000 insects and caterpillars.
On a plot of 10 hectares, great tits can destroy 150,000 insects and caterpillars.
Great tits are surprisingly brave, agile and quick-witted. In some places they have become so accustomed to the presence of people that they take food directly from the hands.
The sharp beak serves as a multi-purpose tool for the titmouse. The bird hollows them out hollows, splits hard shells of nuts and seeds and picks out larvae from under the bark. As it wears, the beak grows continuously.

Security.
In many countries, the great tit, like its other relatives, is taken under protection, although its population is very numerous and the bird is not threatened with extinction. Having long appreciated the enormous merits of these birds in the fight against dangerous pests of crops and forests, people feed them in the winter, and in the spring they hang out nesting boxes that quickly find owners. Tits living in cities often break on transparent shop windows or glazed walls of high-rise buildings, so it is recommended to stick images of birds of prey on such surfaces that scare away all feathered trifles from dangerous obstacles.

Lifestyle.
During the breeding season, the male great tit occupies the home area and defends its borders from other relatives, but in autumn and winter these sociable birds gather in flocks, often uniting with other species of tits. Life in a flock helps to notice danger in time and look for food. The composition of such a flock is constantly changing: some birds fly away, others cling to the group. Tits are very vociferous and communicate with each other with a rich set of whistles and trills. At the end of winter, the flocks of titmouse begin to disintegrate. Males claim their rights to certain areas, and after a while, females also start wandering, seeking to find a partner. The diet of tits is very diverse: in spring and summer they feed on all kinds of insects and their larvae, and in winter - larvae and spiders hidden under the bark. With no less appetite, they eat plant seeds, beech and hazelnuts, seeds of ash, maple, euonymus, yew and hawthorn. In autumn, tits often feast on the pulp and seeds of overripe fruits, and in snowy winter they flock to the feeders in noisy flocks. In search of prey, these restless birds run briskly along the branches, often even upside down. Their natural enemies include small raptors, weasels, ferrets and martens, while squirrels and crows often destroy their nests.

Reproduction.
In spring, the male tit occupies the home area first of all and immediately notifies rivals and neighbors about this with ringing trills, which at the same time attract females. Noticing a possible partner, the male, for greater importance, puffs up his shirt-front and begins to flutter nervously around the chosen one. If the female likes the gentleman, she crouches on a branch, opening her wings and beak, and demands treats, and the male tries to feed her (perhaps in this way the female checks whether the future spouse will be able to feed the chicks). Then the male shows his girlfriend the place he has chosen for the nest, which can be a tree hollow or a titmouse, and if the female likes it, the couple proceeds to build a nest from thin twigs lined with dry blades of grass, moss, feathers and tufts of wool. In April, the female lays 6-12 eggs, white with reddish speckles, and incubates the clutch for 10-14 days, feeding on the male's offerings. The chicks hatch blind and naked. After 2-3 weeks, they fly out of the nest, but their parents feed them for about a week. As a rule, tits make one brood per year. Sometimes the couple has time to make one more brood, and then the older chicks are fed by one male. In winter, juveniles join the blue flocks. Great tits reach puberty at 10 months of age and breed their offspring the following spring.

Great Tit - Parus major.
Length: 14 cm.
Wingspan: 22-25 cm.
Weight: 15-20 g.
Number of eggs in clutch: 6-12.
Incubation period: 10-14 days.
Sexual maturity: 10 months.
Food: insects, fruits, seeds.
Lifespan: up to 15 years.

Structure.
Beak. The beak is short, cone-shaped.
Head. The upper side of the head is covered with a cap of black shiny feathers.
Body. The body is quite dense.
Cheeks. Cheeks are white.
Mirror. There are white stripes on the wings, the so-called. mirrors.
Plumage. The dorsal side is yellowish-green, the abdomen is bright yellow. Wings, tail and coccyx are bluish-gray.
Tie. A wide, tie-like black stripe stretches along the chest and abdomen.
Fingers. Four short fingers are equipped with sharp and tenacious claws.
Legs. Thin paws are devoid of plumage.

related species.
The titmouse family unites about 65 species of birds inhabiting Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. All of them are small birds leading a sedentary lifestyle, and only species nesting far to the north migrate to warmer climes for the winter. These birds live mainly in forests, although many species have successfully adapted to life in the city. The main food of tits is insects and seeds.

Family Titmouse / Paridae

The tit family unites birds that are very uniform both in appearance and in lifestyle. This includes small birds: their body length is 100-180 mm, and their weight is only 7-25 g. The beak of tits is short, cone-shaped, somewhat rounded from above, flattened laterally. The nostrils are covered with short bristle-like feathers. The legs are strong and thick, with strong toes and strongly curved sharp claws, well adapted for climbing tree branches. The wing is relatively short and blunt, has 10 primary primaries. The tail is of medium length, of 12 tails, even or with a slight notch. The plumage is thick and soft. Males and females are colored similarly. Young birds differ from old ones only in paler tones of color. Almost all species of the family shed once a year. Tits are mobile, agile birds that feed mainly on insects, which are collected in the crowns of trees and in the shrub undergrowth. At the same time, many species of the family get their food from under the bark, crushing it, like woodpeckers. They are very sociable. In autumn, they often gather in flocks, uniting with other species of tits, with woodpeckers, nuthatches and pikas. Tits are very smart. Thus, in the UK, tits that lived near country estates learned to remove the caps from exposed bottles of milk or make holes in the caps and peck the cream. Other tits quickly adopted this "experience", and now almost throughout the UK they protect themselves from tits by covering the left bottles with napkins or empty boxes. Tits nesting in the gardens and parks of Moscow in summer have learned to peck butter, lard and other meat products in winter, flying into the vents between window frames, where Muscovites often store these products in winter. Titmouse usually arrange their nests in hollows of trees, less often between branches and branches, from which the nests of birds of prey are built, in burrows, rock crevices and other sheltered places. Remez make bag-like nests, hanging them on thin branches. In clutch from 3-5 to 14-16 white eggs, in most species with reddish-brown speckles. Many species, at least in the central and southern parts of the range, have 2 clutches per year. Tits start nesting early, when there is still snow in the forest and there are frosts at night. Therefore, they make very warm nests, and the female warms the hatched chicks for a long time in the first days, almost without flying out of the nest. Tits feed exclusively on insects, mainly herbivorous, associated with tree and shrub vegetation of forests, gardens and parks. Therefore, in all cultural countries, these birds are protected. For them, artificial closed nests are hung and hollow trees are left in the plantations. Consisting of 10 genera, uniting 65 species, the family of tits is widespread in Eurasia and on the adjacent islands, a small number of species are represented in North America and Africa. Most species are sedentary and nomadic, some species are migratory.

Great tit / Parus major

The great tit is common in deciduous forests, and it rises in the mountains to the upper border of the forest; in uremny thickets along the banks of rivers and reservoirs; in groves, parks and gardens of almost all of Europe (with the exception of its north), in Asia (except for its northern regions, Kamchatka, as well as the highlands of Central Asia), in North Africa. The titmouse is a sedentary bird, and only partially it wanders. In spring it returns to nesting places in the second half of February - early March. At this time, the males sing a monotonous, but not devoid of pleasantness, sonorous song. In words, it can be conveyed as repeated "drank-drank-drank ...". Titmouse settle in a wide variety of forest stands, but still prefer to nest in deciduous forests. Nests are arranged in hollows of woodpeckers, less often in rotten wood of a tree in place of a fallen branch, behind lagging bark, in crevices of wooden buildings, in old squirrel nests, between thick branches and branches that form the skeleton of an old nest of birds of prey, as well as in other closed places, usually at a height of 2-6 m from the ground. There are known cases of using absolutely unusual premises for nesting: in Kyzyl-Kum, a pair of tits successfully built a nest and hatched chicks in the skull of a camel. They sometimes nest in mailboxes. In nesting places made by man, they settle willingly. Both birds of a pair build a nest within 4-7 days. In rainy springs, the construction of individual nests is sometimes delayed for 10-12 days. Tits sometimes drag up to 200 g of building material into large hollows, trying to fill the entire internal space of the bottom with it. A nest is usually built from thin twigs, roots, dry grass stalks, moss, lichens, as well as plant fluff, feathers, tufts of wool, cocoons and webs of spiders and insects. The tray is lined with horsehair, soft fur of various animals and soft feathers. During the breeding season, there are usually two clutches: the first, consisting of 9-15 eggs, in April; the second, of 7-11 eggs, is in June. Usually, for the second laying, the birds move to another hollow located close to the first. But it happens that the grown chicks have not yet flown out, and the titmouse corrects the nest with green moss and lays the eggs of the second clutch right under the chicks. The eggs of tits are white, slightly shiny with a large number of reddish-brown spots scattered over their surface. Only the female incubates them for 13-14 days. The male only occasionally brings her food. The hatched chicks are fed exclusively by the male for the first 3-5 days of life, while the female warms the chicks at this time. The chicks remain in the nest for 19-21 days; parents feed them, making about 400 arrivals with food to the nest per day. The first day or two after hatching, the chicks are given the juice of insects crushed by an adult bird; chicks aged 2-5 days - small spiders and caterpillars. Then the food of the chicks becomes more diverse: parents bring them, in addition to spiders and caterpillars, also butterflies, flies, small beetles. Only before leaving the nest, the chicks begin to receive coarser food, similar to that consumed by adult birds. After the young birds of the first brood leave the nest, the old birds feed them for another 7-10 days. However, one male finishes supplementary feeding, while the female is busy incubating the second clutch. Then the chicks begin to roam in a family flock near the places where they hatched, and the male returns to the female to take part in feeding the second brood. At the end of summer, family flocks of great tits unite with families of other species of tits and kinglets, individual individuals of pikas, nuthatches and some other birds. In such flocks at the beginning of winter, there are usually 30 - 50 individuals, which roam widely wherever there are trees and shrubs. With snowfall, most of the tits migrate to the south, and the individuals remaining to spend the winter move to the outskirts of settlements. These restless birds are constantly in motion: moving from branch to branch, clinging with one or both paws, often hang on the ends of thin branches with their backs to the ground and even upside down, helping themselves when moving up the trunk with wings and tail, constantly fluttering with places in place, and when they find prey, they peck it, pressing it with their paws to a branch. In late spring and summer, great tits forage exclusively on deciduous trees; in autumn and winter they also visit conifers, inspect the undergrowth and undergrowth, often rummage through the herbage and litter, and in winter - in the snow. The great tit is an omnivorous bird. In summer, the basis of its nutrition is eggs, caterpillars and adults of butterflies, beetles, and spiders. In autumn - homoptera and butterfly eggs, few beetles are eaten, seeds appear in the food, berries and fruits are also readily consumed. In winter, the basis of nutrition is plant seeds and butterfly eggs, and in spring - seeds and beetles. In addition, birds quite often eat hymenoptera (mainly sawflies), flies and bedbugs; willingly peck pieces of meat and fat, laid out for them by a person on the fodder tables, they can peck carrion. However, the predatory tendencies of the great tit are not so great. True, this strong bird sometimes kills during the nesting period, piercing the skull of pied flycatchers and some other small hollow-nesting birds with its beak when they try to populate the hollow with its nest; however, more often a bird that has flown into the hollow of a great tit manages to escape from the hostess, escaping with fright or a fair beating. Among the insects in the mass eaten by the great tit, economically harmful species predominate, such as silkworms, various beetles (weevils, leaf beetles), bugs, and aphids. It is also important that tits continue to exterminate harmful insects with particular intensity in winter, many times reducing their numbers by spring.

Hanging titmouse/Anthoscopus minutus

A wonderful nest of hanging tits is placed at the ends of branches, in the fork of small twigs, or suspended at the end of a branch of shrubs or trees, usually not high above the ground. This is a dense, thick-walled pear-shaped building with a side entrance in the form of a small tube made in the upper third of the nest. In the lower part of the nest and at its base there is a special ledge - the "porch", on which the bird sits down before climbing inside the nest. The entrance to the nest itself is very narrow: the bird can hardly squeeze into it. The edges of the entrance close when the bird leaves the nest; not always, but often the bird closes the entrance to it even when it sits down to incubate eggs. In order to get into the nest, the bird hangs on a tube with an inlet and, helping with its beak and paws and deftly using the action of its body weight, opens the entrance. In the same nest, a pair often breeds two broods in a row. In clutch there are from 4 to 12, more often 6-8 white eggs.

Whiskered tit / Panurus biarmicus

Crested titmouse/ Parus cristatus

During the nesting period, it occurs in old and middle-aged spruce and pine forests, where there are hollow trees. In March there is a breakdown into pairs; at this time, the males sing, sitting somewhere on the top of a spruce or pine. The song is a short hoarse trill "... qi-trr, qi-tr-ri ...". Nests are arranged low above the ground in old hollows of small spotted woodpeckers, in last year's hollows of brown-headed chickadees, in natural cavities of tree trunks, if the inlet of the hollow does not exceed 30 mm in diameter; less often, birds use old squirrel nests or nests of predators, settling in their lower part among dry twigs and branches. The base of the nest is built of moss with an admixture of lichen; the inner part and the tray are lined with wool, which is trampled down by birds and turns into a felt-like mass. There are two clutches per season: the first (consisting of 5-9 eggs) - in the second half of April, the second (of 4-6 eggs) - in June. The eggs are white with reddish-brown spots forming a corolla around the blunt end. Only the female incubates for 13-15 days, the male at this time is busy looking for food for himself and for her. Feeding chicks in the nest and their further life proceed in the same way as in other tits. In search of food, the grenadiers inspect the forks of twigs, cracks in the bark, bunches of needles, often while hanging from the branch upside down or upside down, less often flutter at the ends of the twigs, looking out for prey; noticing something suspicious, they stop in the air, quickly fluttering their wings, and on the fly try to peck their prey. In winter, grenadiers can be seen in the snow, where they collect fallen seeds and invertebrates blown from the branches of trees. Crested tits in the summer feed exclusively on lepidoptera (mainly caterpillars), beetles (among which weevils and leaf beetles predominate), homoptera (mainly aphids and scale insects) and spiders; flies, hymenoptera and other insects are less common in food. In autumn and winter, along with invertebrates, seeds of spruce, pine and some other coniferous trees are consumed in large quantities. Like Muscovites, crested tits in summer and early autumn store food (insects and spiders, as well as seeds) for the future, hiding it in cracks and crevices of twigs and between needles. Destroying pests of conifers, crested tits bring invaluable benefits to forests.