Alert Status:
Green -2% decline
Estimated number of breeding territories: 3,400,000
Listen to Blue tit song:
One of the easiest birds to identify in UK gardens, with delightful colours of blue, yellow, white, and green in their plumage, they rarely fail to make us smile. Blue tits sport bright blue caps with white cheeks and a dark line through their eye. Their tails and wing feathers are bright blue, with white wing bars. Both sexes are similar in appearance, both showcasing the yellow breast and underside, though the female is slightly paler.
Juveniles are duller than either adult, and have more of a greenish coloured cap, yellowish feathers around the face, and a dull yellow breast.
Average Length: 11.5 cm
Average Lifespan: 2-3 Years
Average Wingspan: 17-20cm
Blue tits are successful generalists and can eat a wide variety of foods including insects, seeds, berries, nuts, and pollen. They will use their strong legs and claws to hang at any angle and investigate clusters of buds or pick off a caterpillar from a leaf. They are also able to cling onto walls, fences, and other structures in the garden to find hiding insects and other invertebrates.
How to feed: Bird feeders and tables
What to feed: Suet, peanuts, seed mixes, sunflower hearts and seeds
Around the end of March, most blue tits will begin to construct their nests. Blue tits can build their nests in natural cavities but will also lay in nest boxes. The female will build the nest with little or no help from the male and will use moss to form a cup shape. The nest is then lined with soft feathers, fur, or wool, and this process usually takes between 1-2 weeks. The female tries to synchronise the hatching of their eggs in April or May to the bud burst of trees and the explosion of caterpillar prey.
The female will start to lay one egg a day, usually first thing in the morning. The white eggs are smooth and glossy, with purplish-red or reddish-brown spots. Blue tits have one of the largest clutch sizes of all birds – up to 16 eggs. However, blue tits only lay 1 brood a year, with the average number of eggs laid around 8-10. Incubation only begins when the clutch is complete, and then the female will incubate them for around 2 weeks. After hatching, chicks are fed by both parents and each chick can eat 100 caterpillars a day. It’s amazing to think that it only takes around 18-21 days for the chicks to fledge. 10 eggs, 20 days and 20,000 caterpillars later, you have 10 healthy blue tits!
Blue tits are currently of least concern globally and ranked green on the birds of conservation concern here within the UK. The factors that may threaten this species are the same as many others, with climate change, agricultural intensification, and habitat loss at the forefront. European ringing recovery data also shows that the predation rate by cats of blue tits was approximately 32% over the years 2000-2015, so predation by domestic cats is also a concern. Our win-win solutions for how to prevent cat predation can provide guidance to cat owners and bird lovers alike.
Supplementary feeding on bird feeders using seeds or suet cakes
Plant thick hedges in gardens that provide habitat, food and dense cover, or fruit trees.
Blue tits with the most yellow plumage make the best parents! The intensity of yellow in their plumage is determined by carotenoids in the body, which are found in insect prey. The yellowness of the breast plumage has been seen to correlate with how well males and females provision their nestlings. This may suggest that blue tits with the most yellow are better foragers.
Bastianelli, O., Robert, A., Doutrelant, C., de Franceschi, C., Giovannini, P., Charmantier, A. (2021) Identifying drivers of spatio-temporal variation in survival in four blue tit populations. Peer Community Journal. 1: e11. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.17
BirdLife International (2022) Species factsheet: Cyanistes caeruleus. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 29/05/2022.
García-Navas, V., Ferrer, E.S., Sanz, J.J.(2012) Plumage yellowness predicts foraging ability in the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 106(2): 418–429. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2012.01865.x
Pavisse, R., Vangeluwe, D., Clergeau, P. (2019) Domestic Cat predation on garden birds: an analysis from European ringing programmes. Ardea. 107:103–109. doi:10.5253/arde.v107i1.a6
Robinson, R.A. (2005) BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland. BTO, Thetford (http://www.bto.org/birdfacts, accessed on 29 May 2022)
Woodward, I., Aebischer, N., Burnell,D., Eaton, M., Frost,T., Hall, C., Stroud, D., Noble, D. (2020) Population estimates of birds in Great Britain and the United Kingdom. British Birds. 113: 69–104.
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