Blue Tit - Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust

Key Facts

Length: 12cm
Wingspan: 18cm
Weight: 11g
Average Lifespan: 3 years

Smaller than Great Tits, Blue Tits are also birds of woodland, parks and gardens where they nest in holes in trees, but are just as happy to use nestboxes as substitutes.

Tits are active feeders, hunting out insects and spiders amongst the smaller branches of trees in woodlands. But they are also well-adapted to gardens and towns and will visit birdtables and peanut feeders, and are even famed for breaking the tops of milk bottles and taking the creamy top off the milk. In winter, they will form flocks with other tits, roaming the countryside and visiting gardens in groups. Blue Tits have a trilling song: ‘tsee-tsee-tsee’.

How to Identify

Unmistakeable: Blue Tits are colourful little birds with blue caps, white cheeks, black eyestripes, greeny-blue backs, yellow bellies, and blue wings and tails.

Where to Find

Widespread.

How People Can Help

You can help to look after Blue Tits and other garden birds by providing food and water for them – it doesn’t matter if you have a big garden or live in a high-rise flat, there are plenty of feeders, baths and food choices out there to suit all kinds of situations. To find out more about encouraging wildlife into your garden, visit our Wild About Gardens website: a joint initiative with the RHS, there’s plenty of facts and tips to get you started. To buy bird food or feeders, visit the Vine House Farm website – an award-winning wildlife-friendly farm which gives 5% of all its takings to The Wildlife Trusts.

Did you know?

Blue Tits that live in the Canary Islands and North Africa are now recognised as two different species: the Canary Islands Blue Tit and the Ultramarine Tit.