An ordinary, blue or green blue tit is a small tit with a rich bluish-yellow plumage. The bird is widespread in the subarctic and temperate zone of Northwest Africa, West Asia and Europe. It lives in the wild mainly in mixed and deciduous forests, especially in birch and oak. It adapts perfectly to cultivated landscapes and often settles in parks and gardens where it can be found near feeders. Often forms urban populations in Europe. The bird is not timid and easily lets people close to itself.
During breeding, it feeds mainly on animal feed: spiders and insects. In winter and autumn, part of her diet is plant foods, such as seeds. Nests in hollows, as well as in artificial hollows.
Description
A little titmouse with a thin short beak and a short tail is all a blue tit. Detailed information about it is presented in the article below. It is much smaller in size than the great tit, but slightly larger than the Muscovite - its body length is about 12 cm and weighs 14 g. Its color differs noticeably from that of the other species of tits with a blue-azure hat, as well as thin dark blue stripes along the beak - they pass through the eyes, closing at the back of the head. The second dark blue strip goes around the neck, thereby forming the likeness of a collar.
The forehead and cheeks are white; tail, wings and nape bluish-blue. As a rule, the back is olive-green, but may have different shades, depending on the habitat. The bottom of the bird is greenish-yellow, in the lower part there is a small longitudinal dark stripe. Gray-gray legs, black beak.
Area
In Europe, common blue tit is found in almost all countries, but is absent in the north of Scotland, in Iceland, the Balkans and the highlands of the Alps, northern Russia and the Scandinavian Peninsula. Until 1963, she lived on the Outer Hebrides.
Lifestyle: Blue Tit
In the central and southern areas of the range settled down, while in winter in the northern migrates to the west and south. In addition, vertical flights in the mountains are possible. Irregular migrations also depend largely on weather conditions and the availability of feed. In addition, young birds that have not reached puberty are more likely to move than adults.
During the breeding season, they always stay in pairs, mostly get together together in mixed schools with a long-tailed and great tit, common pika and yellow-headed king. At the same time, azure birds among them are distinguished by different flip-flops on very thin branches.
Breeding
As with the main number of small birds, the blue tit reaches puberty a year after birth. The breeding season for birds falls at the end of spring, but mixed flocks of tits in mid-January begin to decay, after which territorial instincts awaken from them.
The female in mid-April begins independently to build her nest. Usually it is located in the voids and hollows of a tree, very often with a narrow hole and very high from the ground. From time to time, common blue tit uses old nests of other birds.
Most often, she has 2 clutches during the season, but in some regions (in Germany, Great Britain, Morocco, as well as in Corsica), eggs are laid only once. Typically, the first clutch occurs in early May, the next - in the 2nd half of June. The number of eggs depends on the maximum number and biotope.
Nutrition
The main part of the diet of poultry is animal food. Most of them are small insects, reaching a length of 1 cm, their larvae, in addition, arachnids. The set of feeds can vary, depending on their availability in the area at this time. At the very beginning of the breeding season, when all the trees are just beginning to be covered with greenery and the caterpillars are either absent or very small, the main part of all its prey is spiders. If the mass of the tracks increases, common blue tit will quickly switch to this type of production.
In huge quantities, various forest pests are destroyed by the bird, including hairy silkworm caterpillars, in addition, bugs, aphids and the other half-winged. Larvae of sawflies and butterfly caterpillars are readily eaten. Various flying insects (wasps, flies, retina-winged), ants, beetles, haylings, various millipedes are also caught.
Subspecies and taxonomy
The common blue tit in 1758 was scientifically described by the famous Carl Linnaeus in the tenth book of his System of Nature. At that moment, this species was given the name Parus caeruleus, and the birds belonged to the tits. The name Cyanistes then designated a subgenus, where many species with similar morphological characters were combined. Until now, this classification has been used by a number of specialists, including Russian ones.