Hi everyone, it's Liam here from a short of wildlife and in this video I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the Blue Tit. The Blue Tit has got to be a contender for the most beautiful common garden bird. There's a blue cap, white cheeks with dark fruit and neck markings. They also have green backs, blue wings and a bright yellow chest. Despite their colours, they're not very big, with a wingspan of just 18cm and an average weight of around 11 grams. They can be seen in a wide variety of habitats, but naturally, blue tits live in and around broadleaf deciduous woodlands. Throughout the winter, most of the blue tits die is made up of seeds and nuts and they're regular visitors to hanging bird feeders. But during the spring and summer, this diet switches to be almost completely made up of invertebrates. Scientists in Scotland have carried out DNA testing on Blue Tit poo to find that their diet in the early spring includes more than 400 different prey species. They also found that the emergence of these invertebrates, particularly winter moth caterpillars, may encourage the blue tits to nest. Depending on the weather, this could be later in some years than others, but usually nesting starts around the end of March. Blue tits are cavity nesters and when natural holes are in short supply, they are very fond of man-made bird boxes. Once a pair has found a suitable nesting site, the female builds a deep cup-shaped nest of grass, moss, lichen and leaves and aligns it with hair, feathers and wool. Once the nest is complete, she begins to lay eggs. These are speckled white and measure 16mm long. She lays one a day until the clutch is complete, but this can go on for more than two weeks. Blue tits lay an average of 8-12 eggs, but it have been recorded laying as many as 19 in a single nest. When there is just one egg left to lay, the female begins to incubate them using a bald area on an abdomen which is known as a brood patch. The eggs take from 13 to 16 days to hatch and once they do, it's all wings on deck. Both parents bring a constant supply of food for the growing chicks, which can eat as many as 100 caterpillars per day. On this high protein diet, they grow very fast and after three weeks, they are ready to fledge to nest. At this point, they are very vulnerable to predation and starvation, but the lucky ones will be fully independent after a further three weeks. Blue tits might try to nest a second time if their first nest fails, but if their chicks reach the point of fledging, they usually only nest once in a season. Blue tits are found across most of Europe, as far west as Turkey and south into Northern Africa. In the UK, they are almost completely resident, rarely moving far from where they hatched, but some European populations do migrate in colder winters. They are around 3.5 million breed and pairs of blue tits in the UK, with around 15 million over-wintering here. During the winter, they can join other small birds in mixed species flocks, which gives them more protection from predators and a better chance of finding good food supplies. In the past, one such food supply was the cream from the top of glass milk bottles. Blue tits figured out that they could pierce or peel back the full cap to get to the fatty cream beneath. The average lifespan for a blue tit is 3 years, but the oldest bird on record made it a 10 years and 3 months of age. Well there we go, hopefully you learned something new about the blue tit. If you did, then check out this other British wildlife video, and if you liked that as well, then subscribe to the channel for future stuff I pull out. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.