First time Long Tailed Tit

[Stuart R]

Hi

For the first time ever I had a LT Tit in the garden today near the feeders. It didn't hang around, nor did it feed at the feeders. I have four feeders out - 2 mixed seed, 1 sunflower seed and one nyger and have regular visits from Great/Blue and Coal Tit, but I wonder if there is any special feed favoured by LTt's?

Cheers

Stuart R

[Mabel]

Fair play, Stuart!
I've never seen a Long-tailed Tit. One of my most "most wanted", it has to be said!

[Kezza]

They love fat products Steve. I get 'peanut cakes' from CJs which are animal and vegetable fats bound with peanut flour. The LTTits (in fact all the tits) love them and although they may seem expensive, they do last a long time. Seem to prefer the plain or insect ones.
They also enjoy fat balls and occassionally peanuts.

http://www.birdfood.co.uk/products.php?area_id=2&group_id=8&nav_id=26

We get 10-15 visiting with a few blue tits. Lovely birds.

[Ruby]

Hi Stuart,

Nice to hear you had some Long-tails on your feeder - there does seems to be more and more similar tales on the forum - generally speaking, they only come to my garden when passing through in large flocks and take immediately to the feeders before moving on.... We use sunflower hearts, but I don't know whether this is necessarily any better than anything else.

As a matter on interest, I was walking through some mixed woodland the other day, and there were lots of tit flocks with various other bits and bobs attached (even saw a Firecrest!) but I reckon that Long-tails outnumbered even Blue Tits, which was a bit of a surprise, so I don't know if they had a particularly good breeding season....

[scfmerlin]

Hi Mabel
I normally have a few in the garden and would be pleased to send you one for Christmas but you know how it is?
kind regards
Merlin
Fair play, Stuart!
I've never seen a Long-tailed Tit. One of my most "most wanted", it has to be said!

[busyb]

We`ve not had many coming to the garden so far this year, but last year we had 12/15 that came regularly at about 3.30 every afternoon, they love fat balls ect, but we also found they liked cold mashed potato even more!!
anyone else found an unusual food the birds love?

[Stuart R]

We`ve not had many coming to the garden so far this year, but last year we had 12/15 that came regularly at about 3.30 every afternoon, they love fat balls ect, but we also found they liked cold mashed potato even more!!
anyone else found an unusual food the birds love?


Many thanks to you all. Will try out all the suggestions

Cheers

Stuart
R

[whomes]

Funnily enough I saw my first ever LTTs at Fowlmere on Saturday. There were about 7 or 8 of them moving in a group from branch to branch at dusk. Typically it was far too dark to get a picture of them. They were making a heck of a noise between them.

[flippsy]

Funnily enough I saw my first ever LTTs at Fowlmere on Saturday. There were about 7 or 8 of them moving in a group from branch to branch at dusk. Typically it was far too dark to get a picture of them. They were making a heck of a noise between them.

We saw long-tailed tits too for the first time in our garden on 10th December - I've been hoping for them for weeks since I knew they were in the nearby woods. (I only started feeding the birds this October). A flight of them (about 10 I think) swooped in low to a low bush then headed up to the larger bushes/small trees where my feeders are - prospected around them for a few minutes but didn't feed and left. I couldn't believe my eyes - I wasn't expecting them of course. My pictures were taken with my ordinary compact digital, and of course it was dismal weather - so they are small and blurry objects - but definitely pink and black striped with long long tails! Yipee! but I haven't seen them again. It's hard when you're out all the hours of daylight...
We have black sunflower seeds, peanuts, fat balls and thistle seeds on offer - I might try some of the suggestions on here to see if I can entice them back. Yesterday we saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker for the first time too!!! and that was feeding on our fat balls and peanuts. Lovely!

[daizy]

We've had long tailed tits visiting the garden on and off since the summer. They seem to eat any variety of seed we put in the feeders, and the peanuts. But they don't stay. Not seen them for a few weeks, sadly.

[nigelblake]

At my feeder site the LTTs go through one of the dried insect filled fat balls made by 'Guardman' every day! so they like them...