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Great tit | Parus major
Koolmees | Carbonero común
The largest tit in Europe, and one of the best-studied wild birds in the world thanks to decades of nest-box work. Its repertoire is so variable that any unfamiliar spring sound in the wood must be ruled out as great tit first.
Voice
The best-known sound is a clear, two-note sawing teacher-teacher, heard from January into June and peaking in February and March. Beyond it lies a huge repertoire: a bell-like ping, a persistent nasal churr-r-r-r in alarm, and thin tsi-tsi contact notes. Almost any unidentified woodland sound turns out to be this bird.
Recording: Benoît Van Hecke — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
Glossy black head with big white cheek patches, olive-green mantle, blue-grey wings with a single white wing bar, and yellow underparts split by a black central stripe. In males that stripe is broad and runs right down between the legs; in females it is narrow and often broken. Juveniles are dull, with yellow cheeks and a faint stripe.
Confusion species
Blue Tit is smaller, with a blue cap and tail and no belly stripe. Coal tit shows a white nape patch and lacks green and yellow above. Marsh and willow tit have neither yellow nor a belly stripe. When in doubt: only great tit combines white cheeks with a black stripe down a yellow belly.
Habitat
Any woodland with cavities, from oak and beech to conifer plantation, plus gardens, parks, churchyards, orchards, hedge banks and village centres. In southern Europe also cork oak, olive groves and montane pine. Nests in tree holes, wall crevices, letter boxes and nest boxes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified with EUNIS — the European standard for habitats.
Range and movements
Almost all of Europe, from Lapland to Andalusia. In the Netherlands the commonest garden bird year-round, with autumn irruptions of northern birds in some years. In Spain widespread all year, from oak woods and olive groves to city parks and mountain pine forest, with birds descending from the highest ground in winter.
- Resident
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Late February and March, shortly after sunrise, in leafy woodland or a village street with old trees: the sawing song is then unmistakable. To learn the sexes, set a feeder at eye level and check the width of the belly stripe between the legs on every bird.
Conservation status
Very numerous and broadly stable to increasing, helped by nest boxes and winter feeding. Locally the loss of old cavity-rich trees, spring insect shortages and the growing mismatch between hatching and the caterpillar peak in warm springs all have an effect.
Scientific name
Parus major | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Parus in that same work. Parus is the Latin word for 'tit'. major is Latin for 'larger': the great tit is the largest of the European tits. The specimen the first description was based on came from Europe.