Great Tit

How to recognise it

• Black head and neck with bold white cheeks, olive-green upperparts and yellow underparts
• Lemon-yellow breast with a black stripe running down the middle from the bib
• Green wing coverts, otherwise blue-grey wings with a white bar; blue-grey tail with white outer edges
• The female is paler, with a less intense black bib and narrower, sometimes broken belly stripe

Call and song

A well-known call is a "tí-ta, tí-ta", often likened to a squeaky wheelbarrow wheel and used to claim a territory. A chaffinch-like "ping, ping" is also often heard. Soft single notes such as "pit", "spick" or "tjitt" serve as contact calls. At enemies on the ground it gives a harsh rattling "trrrr" or a repeated "dädädä".

Where and when

The Great Tit occurs throughout Sweden and is reported from all 21 counties. It lives in open deciduous woodland, mixed forest and woodland edges, and in dense forest it usually keeps to clearings. It is reported most in November to February. In Fennoscandia most eggs are laid between late April and mid May.

Food and behaviour

In summer it mainly eats insects and spiders picked from leaves, and in autumn and winter it also takes berries and seeds. At bird tables it readily takes peanuts, sunflower seeds and food scraps. In winter it forages in mixed flocks with other tits. It holds large seeds with its foot and pecks at them with its bill. It nests in holes and readily uses nest boxes.