Why does this blue tit bird desperately want to come inside?
There's a strange thing going on since a few days ago in the office. Suddenly we recognized a blue tit flying like crazy up and down on our window. It looks quite average, a beautiful bird, not like somehow sick or something. Still, the first day we thought: "Okay, this poor thing sure is ill." We didn't bother anymore since we thought it's going to die soon.
The next day however, the blue tit flew a few charges again. Always flying to the window just to go up and down on it then. This lasts for about 5 minutes before the bird moves away again.
The behavior is shown frequently for about the last 5 days. Approximately the tit comes every 5 hours trying to storm our window. This doesn't mean, that it's always exactly 5 hours. Sometimes it's only there once per office-day and sometimes it comes back after an hour.
I've never seen something like this. What's wrong with it? What causes this behavior?
1 answer
Two possibilities:
There's something it thinks is food on the inside. Note that blue tits are quite clever at accessing food, to the extent of opening foil-topped milk-bottles (though the linked article illustrates this with a photo of a great tit!)
At this time of year, more likely, it's not trying to get in, but sees its reflection as a rival or (as the sexes look alike in blue tits) a potential mate. Winter tit flocks break up in spring and pairs form. This is common is in some species - (European) robin for example, and has been seen in blue tits as well. The time of day at which this occurs may be affected by light levels, which change the brightness of the reflection, also by indoor lighting. You may be able to prove it by placing a mirror in a similar area.
Sources for the second phenomenon:
- RSPB (UK)
- Wm. E. Ritter, and Seth B. Benson. "Is the Poor Bird Demented? Another Case of Shadow Boxing". The Auk, vol. 51, no. 2, 1934, pp. 169–179
- Daniel Klem, Jr. "Glass: A Deadly Conservation Issue for Birds" Bird Observer Vol. 34, No. 2, 2006 (A brief mention at the end of p.3)
- MK Colquhoun. "Notes on the social behaviour of blue tits" Brit. Birds 35 (1942): 234-240. Well worth a read if you're interested in pairing behaviour
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/15408. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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