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Eurasian Blue Tit
Cyanistes caeruleus | Pimpelmees | Herrerillo común
The Blue Tit is Europe's smallest widespread tit and the only one with cobalt blue on crown, wing and tail. Behind the cheerful looks sits a fiercely territorial bird that fights hard for nest holes each spring.
Voice
The song is a clear, accelerating tsee-tsee-tsee-hihihihi: two or three high notes followed by a rattling trill, mainly from February into May. Calls include a sharp nasal tsee-tsee-tsee-dedede and an angry scolding churr at the nest hole; these are heard all year.
Recording: Benoît Van Hecke — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
White face with a narrow black eyestripe and a blue crown; nape, wings and tail cobalt blue, mantle greenish, underparts yellow with a thin dark central stripe. Males average a brighter blue crown, but overlap is considerable. Juveniles have yellow cheeks, a dull green crown and lack the crisp black-and-white pattern.
Confusion species
Coal Tit is grey-brown with a black head and a white nape patch, showing no blue or yellow at all. Crested Tit gives itself away instantly by the speckled crest and black bridle mark. Great Tit is much bulkier, with a black head, white cheek and a broad black belly stripe.
Habitat
Deciduous and mixed woodland with mature oaks is the core habitat, but the species is just as numerous in parks, old gardens, orchards, hedgebanks and osier beds. Anywhere holes or nest boxes meet caterpillar-rich oaks holds Blue Tits; in winter also in reeds and waterside willows.
Range and movements
Almost all of Europe except the far north, east into Russia; largely resident, with noticeable coastal movement in some autumns. Common throughout the Netherlands. In Spain it breeds in woodland over nearly the whole peninsula, up into the oak forests of the southern sierras.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
In March and April look early in the morning for singing males high on a still bare oak branch. Later in spring, adults flying in with caterpillars betray an occupied hole. In winter they are easiest at fat balls and in roving mixed tit flocks.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern). Dutch numbers are stable to slightly increasing, helped by nest boxes and garden feeding. Concerns are the removal of old, cavity-rich trees and the risk that breeding no longer coincides with the peak in caterpillar abundance.