The titmice of Nowhere Wood

[titmice is an old English name for birds of the Paridae family, including blue and great tits. It is also a term familiar to the American readers of these stories.]

This is a bright and early sunlit story, chipper with the sounds of Spring: 

“Ti-ti-pu, ti-tipu….tsee-tsee-tsee”. 

The quick, little, sharp notes, ticking up from the hazel beside the path, like a tiny clock wound too tight. I stop and look up. Far up high in the tree, a blue tit darts between the twigs, hopeful as a scrap of summer sky—blue crown, white cheeks, yellow breast flashing through the bare twigs.

It paused only long enough to scold me before flitting deeper into the wood.

I walked on.

Nowhere Wood is just beginning to wake into spring. The oaks are still bare but their buds have swollen, and soon the leaves will open. When that happens, the caterpillars will come—thousands of them, hanging in the branches like green commas.

The small birds of the wood are waiting.

Further along the path I hear another call, slower, deeper and more deliberate: teacher-teacher. A great tit landed on the trunk of an old oak and turned its head to look at me. Compared with the restless blue tit it seemed calm, almost thoughtful, its black breast stripe neat against the yellow. A bird with presence and authority.

For a moment the bird stayed there, gripping the bark.

Then it flew slowly, deliberately, away to an important meeting.

I follow the path round a bend where the hazels thickened. Suddenly the wood becomes alive with movement. Two blue tits chase each other through the branches, and the great tit returned, hopping along a twig above them.

They were not quarrelling. Instead, they searched the branches together, peering beneath buds and along the bark.

One of the blue tits hung upside down to inspect the underside of a twig. Then it seized something invisible and swallowed it.

Food.

Soon there would be much more of it. When the oak leaves open the caterpillars will appear in a sudden green flood, and somewhere nearby these birds will be prepared for it.

In a hole in an old tree—or perhaps in a nest box hidden in the wood—a female tit might be sitting on a clutch of pale speckled eggs. One egg laid each morning until the nest held eight, or nine, or even ten.

When the chicks hatch, the parents will work without rest, carrying caterpillars back to the nest again and again and again.

The birds above me moved on, drifting through the branches lightly in the breeze

A moment later they were gone.

I walked a little further and noticed a feather lying on the path. Olive green, with a hint of yellow at the edge. A great tit’s feather, most likely.

I picked it up, then set it back down.

Somewhere behind me the ticking call of the blue tit began again.

The wood, it seems, is full of them.

1. Titmice are popular visitors to gardens with bird feeders, especially in the winter. What are the advantages and disadvantages of feeding birds with bird feeders?

 

Notes on the story

More spring stories