Long-tailed tits | Aegithalos caudatus
Dwellers of hedgerows, elder, holly and hawthorn
Of all the birds, it’s the long-tailed tits that care least about my existence. They literally couldn’t give two flaps that I’m here in the garden as they dance around me, leap frogging one another from tree to tree. It’s as if I am not here at all.
Distinctive is the word I’d use for long-tailed tits, with that visibly long tail, black and grey markings and rounded fluff ball bodies with pookie eyes. They effortlessly straddle the art of cute and cool.
I often hear them coming before I spot them, their distinctive clicking noise as they prowl the garden hedges and fruit trees for aphids and other small insects to eat. What are they saying to one another? Are they talking to themselves? Telling each other what they’ve found? Having a gossip?
Yesterday I watched mesmerised as the same pair in front of me clicked around the front of our house clinging to the stone window frames and walls warmed in the sun. This is where red spider mites, spiders and other insects crawl catching some rays, hoping they too won’t be caught.
I wish the long-tailed tits would care about me because they’re one of my favourite birds. Fluffy faces and too cool for school striped wings, a racing car tail. They’re like a teddy bear crossed with a caped superhero. Super Tits.
Their nests are a sphere of moss, feathers and lichen, weaved around tiny twigs of shrubs and small trees in hedgerows. A cosy fairytale home for their chicks to be raised by both parents. Stretchy and soft, a living fleece.
p.s. this week’s Garden Design Guide lesson for paid subscribers is on making ponds of all types for your garden ecosystem...
Ponds in garden ecosystems
Over 50% of ponds in the UK have vanished in the last fifty years according to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
I love the way you see these sweet comical birds. Perfect description! Made me laugh as I sat in my shed out of the rain and read it just now....while these super tits were whizzing about in the bushes and trees doing their thing..
I have some that visit the peanut feeder in the garden. I didn't know until I read about them that they use spiders webs to construct their nests they use it like stretchy elastic rope to hold the nest into the branches and it also allows the nest to expand as the chicks grow. How cool is that!