Give Young Great Tits A Chance.

The sight of parent birds diving in and out of a garden nest box during May is addictive viewing for householders, but for species such as the Great Tit now can be the most stressful time of year. Females will have spent much of April laying and incubating eggs, and May is when chicks usually hatch, with both parents working hard to tend to them. For fledglings, finding the next good meal is by no means straightforward but, thankfully, there are things that people can do to help. With their survival on a knife-edge, food provided in gardens could prove the difference between life and death.
Help needed!
Young Great Tits receive only a week or two of post-fledging care from their parents before they are completely on their own. While still in the nest, these birds are warm and relatively sedentary, so that they are not using much energy. After fledging they expend calories easily when they are developing their foraging skills. This is where householders can help.
The year-round BTO Garden BirdWatch survey* shows that numbers of Great Tits seen in gardens increase, on average, by over a third between April and June. Youngsters, in particular, swarm over suet-based foods and will also take a range of other morsels on offer.
Feeding habits
Great Tits are quite catholic in their tastes, eating a range of natural and human-provided foods throughout the year. Great Tit fledglings are particularly partial to suet-based products, and these will also cater for large flocks of young Blue Tits. Seed mixes with low cereal content and sunflower hearts are also popular.
Top feeding suggestions
Specific favourites are BTO Super Suet Balls in a BTO Suet Ball Feeder, which has a FeedSafe antibacterial coating and BTO Sunflower Hearts in a BTO Seed Feeder, also with a FeedSafe coating to help inhibit microbial growth.
What to look for
Great Tits are the biggest of the British Tits. An adult male has white cheeks; a black, glossy cap, extending around the neck and forming a bib; a lemon-yellow breast and belly with a wide central black stripe down the middle; and a green back that turns blue-grey towards the rump and tail and on to the wings. Females look like males but lack glossiness to the cap and have a less well developed black stripe down their breast and belly, and this does not extend from leg to leg. Juveniles have a dull black
cap, with a dull yellow colour to their cheeks, breast and belly.