Long-tailed tit a rare treat at feeder

SPRING may be here, and no real need to feed the birds, but the sight of a new species at the bird table sends me to buy another bag of peanuts, whatever the expense. Long-tailed tits are almost unheard of at bird feeders and so pretty and entertaining that I want to keep them coming. There’s a possessiveness to it — people with garden bird tables will know what I mean.

A friend had a female sparrowhawk staking out his peanut feeders, and, although it was, of course, feeding on the clients, it was hard not to want to keep it around; it was so beautiful and dramatic as it came banking and twisting through the trees, visiting Armageddon on its prey as surely as a Scud missile.

But back to the long-tailed tits. They are common throughout Ireland, but rarely seen except by country walkers, and then often, as they swoop from tree to tree down a leafy lane. Even without the leaves, in winter, they are hard to see, acrobatically climbing the branches or suspended from twigs, the soft, downy body as round as a golf ball and not much bigger, like a bauble or a powder puff, with a tail one-and-a-half times as long. But for the black marking on the head and the long dark tail, the whole bird is ‘soft-focus’, a ball of down, like its nest.