Varied lifestyle for Irish coal tit

COAL tits are visiting my garden.

I’ve managed to ring several of them. Our area is fairly open and windswept, so what are these little tree dwellers doing here in the depths of winter? A report from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) on their Garden Bird-watch Survey suggests a possible explanation.

The coal tit’s glamorous relative, the blue tit, is especially well known, at least since 1929, when it started breaking open bottle caps to steal the creamy top of the milk underneath. Its large cousin, the great tit, though not as famous, is the most studied bird in the world. ‘Old King Coal’, however, is the Cinderella of the tits and keeps a lower profile. He’s sombrely attired in black white and grey but his pale cheeks and a white patch on the back of the neck are distinctive. The two-note ‘teacher teacher’ song is a familiar woodland sound in spring.