Great Tit
Parus major
Print fact sheet (PDF)
The black stripe down a yellow chest, and a two-note 'tea-cher' that carries right across the garden.
The largest of our tits: glossy black head with white cheeks, olive-green back and a yellow breast divided by a bold black stripe — broad and unbroken on males, narrower on females. Great tits are common everywhere in Dumfries with trees, from town gardens to riverside woodland, and take readily to nest boxes. Bolder and heavier than blue tits, they tend to dominate at a feeder.
Behaviour
Great tits have an unusually large vocabulary — dozens of calls — but the one everyone learns is the ringing, repeated two-note 'tea-cher, tea-cher' that starts up in January and is one of the earliest signs of the turning year. They feed lower down than blue tits, often on the ground among leaf litter, and their heavier bill lets them take beech mast and hazelnuts as well as insects.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Tits (Paridae)
- Size
- 14 cm · sparrow-sized
- UK status
- Green-listed
Photo by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons