Coal Tits in October

The first chilly days of October see birds piling back into gardens. Amongst the crowd is the diminutive Coal Tit, which has a special way of making the most of your garden offerings.

Coal Tits have a light-weight appearance, being slightly smaller than Blue Tits. They have a black and white streaked head, which includes a black bib, white cheeks, black cap and white patch on the back of the head, the latter feature is especially useful for identification purposes. Coal Tits have olive-grey upper-parts with two white wing bars (the only tit species to show this feature) and white-buff under-parts. The overall appearance is akin to a smaller, drabber cousin of the Great Tit.

Coal Tits are inconspicuous garden birds which are less showy than many of their cousins, such as Blue and Great Tits. Coal Tits can hop into a garden, grab a seed and disappear again largely unnoticed and they are one of a select group of garden birds that, during autumn, cache their food for leaner times ahead. Look out for Coal Tits alighting onto a garden feeder, grabbing a tasty morsel and then flying away to store it. Caches are typically located a few metres above the ground but can also be placed in the ground. By caching garden offerings during October, Coal Tits guarantee themselves a more reliable supply of food during the months ahead.

In October many Coal Tits often appear in mixed-species flocks alongside other tit species. The number of Coal Tits that come into gardens each autumn varies annually depending, in large part, on food availability in the wider countryside. Research using data from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Garden BirdWatch shows that when natural foods, such as Sitka Spruce seed, are abundant, fewer Coal Tits come into gardens.

Feeding preferences
Coal Tits have a fine beak that is adept at handling many foods. At Garden Feeding Stations, wild bird food such as seeds and peanuts are a particular favourite and both may be cached during autumn. Suet-based bird foods are also eaten. Sunflower Hearts in a Seed Feeder are a favourite.

If I ever had a favourite garden bird, I think it would be a Coal Tit!

I cannot let you say it's a 'drabber' version of a Great Tit as I love its delicate buff-pink breast colour and how that blends with the greys and blacks elsewhere. Yes, it isn't as bright as a Bullfinch, but it's one of the most beautiful little birds we have in Britain!

We don't see them down here as often as in our garden in Ayr unfortunately, but they do appear (often with with Long-tailed Tits) all the same. Down here Oaks and other deciduous trees take pride of place, whereas their favourite Alders, Birches and Pines surrounded our house in Ayr. Indeed, I'll never forget the high-pitched 'cheeps' of a family of Coal Tits as they moved around a self-seeded and quick-growing Pine at the foot of our garden. It was very hard to spot them all the same - as they tumbled around the branches searching for tiny spiders, etc.!

Here are a few pics of 'our' Coal Tits - the first shows one coming out of a nest they had under the roof of our bird table, the second is of a pair from the nest feeding at a nearby feeder, then there's one which flew into a window and needed a rest before flying on, the next shows one on a feeder (yes - sunflower hearts again!), and the last pic is a Hampshire bird, enjoying peanuts on a feeder here!:)

Love them as well Catherine, pretty regular visitors here, super shots there, the one in the hand in particular, they are so tiny close up.