Great Tit - 1894

Parus major

A common resident.

In cold weather in the winter, by hanging large lumps of suet by a string in front of our dining-room window, we used to provide food for the Tits, and great entertainment to ourselves in watching their lively gestures. There would be often three or four of them on the string at once, either sliding down towards the food, or waiting their turn to feast on it, and the restless little birds would be constantly coming and going throughout the day. Directly the suet was finished they would tap at the window to inform us that more was required ; and, at the beginning of the winter they would even come and peck and flutter against the glass to let us know that, in their opinion, the time was come for us to hang out the expected food as usual.

The Great Tit, the Blue Tit, and the Coal Tit, were all daily visitors as long as our relief was extended to them. The Marsh Tits never once came to the suet, although there were plenty of them in the shrubberies close at hand. We used to find numerous nests of all the common English Tits in our garden ; the Great Tit, the Blue Tit, and the Coal Tit always building in holes in walls, while the Marsh Tit preferred a hole in a tree.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands