While I will always say the most personal and meaningful bird to myself is the Pied Wagtail, I can not help but get excited when I see one of these beautiful garden birds.
When we was moving into our new house in Ebbw Vale, one of the first things to be installed was a bird feeder. It sat for weeks unnoticed, unused and generally wilfully ignored by the thousands of birds in our neighbourhood. Then one afternoon, a beautiful Long-tailed tit said “Ok I’ll try it out”. Becoming for a while a frequent solo visitor before blue tits, great tits, robins, and more jackdaws than our small garden feeder can structurally support.
The Long-tailed tit is easily recognisable with its distinctive colouring, a tail which is bigger than its body, and undulating flight. Happily noisy residents, long-tailed tits are most usually noticed in small, excitable flocks. Though here in the Welsh Valleys they are often seen in ones or twos darting to and fro from hedgerows.
Like most tits, they rove the woods and hedgerows looking for insects, but I see them most at my garden bird feeder when I either have mealworm out or they will eat seeds in winter when other foods are scarce.
There used to be a playground rhyme that I remember my grandmother once recited when she saw one of these birds in Luxmore Gardens, Brockley, London:
“Tell-tale tit, your mother can’t knit, your dad can’t walk with a walking stick!” Very much a taunt of it’s time, but it shows how the ‘Long-tailed tit’ not only makes a visual impression but also gains a smile due to it’s name.
I have found in our garden if you make a ‘Psshhh, Psshhh’ noise -mimicking theirs a little, you can often summon a curious one to come and look at you.
If the Long-tailed tit lacks it’s own myths, folklore or stories, (other than a child’s insulting rhyme), it makes up for it in a most friendly character; often they will flutter close to us human watchers; small friends who stop by to say hello.
Their friendliness applies equally to their own kind their social behaviour reaches a ‘friendly’ peak at breeding time when those who have failed to breed join close relatives to assist in raising their brood; a pair may in this way accrue one or even two helpers which greatly increases the chance of survival for the chicks. This is of course all down to the birds wanting to pass on their genes and their compassionate friendly society to the next generation – even if this is done as a supporter or friend of another breeding pair.
I think if we was to ever look for a bird which embodied and symbolises compassion, it would be the small, friendly and kind, Long-tailed tit.