Bird-brain is not a sensible appellation for human beings to use. For, after all, birds could navigate unerringly before we could. We are told this firmly by the eminent scientist Hubert Reeves in his book Oiseaux, Merveilleux Oiseaux. And now, in a longish article on Blue Tits, Coal Tits and others of the species. Corine Lacrampe tells us some remarkable facts about their habits. For example, the Coal Tit (Parus ater) which in France, anyway, lives to a great extent in coniferous forests, often at some height, has its own style of laying away food for the winter. "You have to admire" the writer states, "the cleverness with which she stows away her provisions. Firmly holding the larvae or grubs of insects in her claws, she takes out the head and intestines with a few pecks of her beak. In this way the bodies will be preserved for a few weeks without deteriorating. To stock greenfly, of which she is very fond, the coal tit rolls them into pellets containing about thirty. And she takes care, this far-seeing tit, to put them in several different caches. If one is raided, she has others. The introduction of a monoculture of spruce on hillsides and on plains has extended her domain. And the coal tit, the smallest of the tits are those which are earliest of lay in spring. Thus they can hope to have two or three broods in a year."
The coal tit, for the last few years in certain parts of the east of Ireland have been hugely numerous. Sometimes around the feeders they are like swarms of midges. Well, slight exaggeration, but this can be put down to the fecundity of the European birds, for the arrival of flocks here are noticeable. All due, the writer thinks, to over-population in north-eastern Europe and subsequent migration to the south west. The Blue tit (Parus caeruleus), we are told, is most sensitive to winter hardship. If conditions are bad the blue tit will die of cold and exhaustion if it cannot find food for half of the short day.
On nests, the author tells us how this bird loves to use former residences of woodpeckers. In Irish conditions, any refuge will do. There is a picture here of a nest in an upturned saddle. In a fortnight the young reach their adult weight. An observer. Paul Isermann, saw 12,500 feeding flights by the parents in that period. Much more about all tits in the February edition of Le Francais.