Wildlife watch: Long-tailed tit
Long-tailed tits have a strong family network, where everyone helps out with raising the young! Discover how to provide food and nesting material in your garden
The long-tailed tit (Carduelis carduelis) has blush, black and white colouring with a long tail, which is longer than its body. Usually seen in small family groups, it has a bouncy flight and a ‘deet-deet’ call. It’s common in parks and gardens, where it eats invertebrates, particularly the eggs of moths and butterflies. In gardens it will visit feeders for peanuts and suet.
In spring, males and females pair up and spend three weeks building an intricate domed nest in trees or hedges, using lichen and cobwebs, lined with thousands of feathers. The female lays usually one clutch of up to eight eggs. Both parents share feeding duties when the chicks hatch, but unpaired relatives also chip in – it’s not uncommon for ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ to help with raising the family.
How to help long-tailed tits
To garden for long-tailed tits is to garden for invertebrates. Grow native plants such as hawthorn, hazel, blackthorn and spindle for butterflies and moths to lay their eggs on so they have plenty of caterpillars to feed their chicks. Some of these eggs will remain on the shrubs in winter and long-tailed tits will scour them for a source of winter sustenance.
Creating log and leaf piles, letting areas of grass to grow long and planting plenty of nectar-rich flowers will also have an indirect effect on long-tailed tits, which will find anything from insects and their eggs, spiders and other invertebrates to eat, plus spider webs and lichen to build their amazing nests.
If you have space, plant a hedge so they can build their wonderful domed nest in your garden. You’ll be glued to your windows for weeks.
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