The Eurasian Blue Tit - "That Giddy Sprite" Quiz

Answer: smaller than a European robin

Eurasian blue tits are small birds, around 4.7 inches or 12 cm long. They are associated with woodlands across their range, nesting in cavities, such as holes in trees that may have previously been used by woodpeckers or squirrels, though they will also use artificial nest boxes.

Their range is increasing northwards in Scandinavia over time, partly due to climate change. The southern limit of their range is the Mediterranean Sea, to the south of which is found the very similar African blue tit.

Answer: caterpillars

The Eurasian blue tit times its egg laying to coincide with arboreal green caterpillars feeding on young tree leaves. Caterpillars are essential to rearing healthy young. In captivity, when no caterpillars haven been been fed to blue tit hatchlings, they have failed to thrive. Each chick requires between 70 and 90 caterpillars a day while it is in the nest. Carotene pigments are also responsible for the colouring of carrots and flamingoes.

Answer: oak

Eurasian blue tits have been known to feed on apple trees throughout the year, including eating the fruit. But the tree they are most strongly associated with is the oak. Oak trees are home to a host of invertebrates on which the blue tits feed, such as certain moths, whose caterpillars burrow into oak leaf buds before the tree's natural defences of tannins kick in.

Answer: milk

Blue tits are very adaptable and have developed behaviours to take advantage of humans living nearby. They have been known to strip wallpaper from inside houses - presumably looking for food or nesting material. Blue tits were particularly well known for taking advantage of daily milk deliveries, pecking into foil milk bottle tops to drink the cream.

Answer: True

The pollination of plants by birds is known as ornithophily. Tropical birds such as hummingbirds and honey eaters are particularly known for being important pollinators when they feed on nectar. Blue tits can derive a large portion of their calorific intake from nectar, and have been found to be pollinators of some plants such as the Crown Imperial, a fritillary found in Turkey.

Answer: coconut

Blue tits are agile and often hang upside down in trees looking for insects or other invertebrates. They are a popular visitor to bird tables, feeding on peanuts, fat or halved coconuts suspended on strings. They will take food from bird tables in the summer as well, not to feed it to their young, but to eat themselves, especially if their preferred food source is in short supply.

Answer: True

The male's longer wings and lighter body make it more manoeuvrable. It has to locate and defend a nesting hole. It is also more visible and vulnerable to predators because of its displays. The male, having secured a nesting place, may over-winter there. In the spring he has to get a female to accept it. Once she does, she clears it of any unwanted debris and does most of the nest building herself, over maybe two weeks. She then overnights there, with the male roosting nearby, but away from the nest. Her eggs each weigh about 1 gram, which is around a tenth of her body weight. She can only produce and lay one egg a day and still be able to fly. Blue tit clutch sizes can be highly variable, ranging from 3 to as many as 19 eggs.

Literary note - here Wordsworth may well be using "gaudy" in the old fashioned sense of "rejoicing" or "jubilant", rather than suggesting the bids are garish.

Answer: Eurasian jay

Blue tits are important sources of food for many birds. One is the Eurasian jay, whose habit of burying and forgetting acorns has led to them more less planting a tree on which their prey depend, and hence feeding their descendants. Another predator is the great spotted woodpecker.

They nest in holes which they use once, then abandon, leaving them for other birds like blue tits to use. These woodpeckers remember previous nest holes and have been observed killing multiple blue tit broods with their spear-like tongues.

Answer: sparrowhawk

The winter is cruel for blue tits. Their preferred invertebrates become scarce, and they will consume almost anything that is edible. Some join flocks with other species to forage. With the loss of deciduous foliage, and their increasingly desperate foraging activity, blue tits become more visible and vulnerable to predators, with sparrowhawks being particularly effective at taking them.

Other birds that prey on blue tits include owls and merlins.

Answer: Tom Tit

Britons love their bird nicknames. Pied wagtails are called Willy Wagtail and the bird now known as the Eurasian robin was originally called a redbreast, before the nickname took over. As well as Tom Tit, nicknames for the blue tit include "Billy Biter" - presumably because the bird is so fearless in defending its nest, Nun and "Blue Bonnet". The name "tit" is a contraction of "titmouse", which combined Old English words for "small" and "tiny bird". Despite their difficulties and predators, and perhaps due to their great adaptability, blue tits are a very successful and common species in Europe, with 20-40 million pairs across the continent.


Further reading: I recommend "The Blue Tit" by Martyn Stenning, a comprehensive and fascinating examination of all aspects of the blue tit and associated species.

The poetry in the questions is an extract from "The Kitten and Falling Leaves", an 1888 work by William Wordsworth.