Major

It's a while since I last posted a photo of a great tit, which is a good enough reason for doing it again today, but also, this is R's choice of the images I just showed him.

My own favourite, for its energy rather than because of any technical virtues, is the blackbird shot, which I caught as I walked through Hiller's show garden this morning on my way to the hide. One second faster in unwinding the zoom, and I'd have caught him taking a very splashy bath in the deep water left in the plant tray by yesterday's precipitations (various). Between the snow, sleet and rain that fell, the rock-hard ground around here has been overwhelmed, and we had to drive around some quite significant standing water on our way to and from Dunnington. Part of our own garden has flooded since Wednesday, though I hope and expect that by tomorrow the dry ground will have softened enough to accept its soaking.

Great tits are one of our more successful garden birds, having increased in number over the past forty years. The RSPB estimates a breeding population in mainland Britain of around two and a half million pairs. Some people say that they're aggressive, though I can't say I've seen this, though they are relatively solitary, and less likely than other tits to be seen in flocks. As Lev Parikian points out, they have a very varied song, but my own mnemonic is: if it sounds like a car alarm, it's probably a great tit.