Ken Tone
Thursday 5th April 2007, 09:51
Tried this on the general 'birds and birding' list but got no response at all. Forgive me for trying again here if you were one of the few who read it before, but I'm doing so in the hope that this is the more appropriate list. If I still get no response, I promise to retire into a cyberspace corner, blushing, and mumbling in embarrassment ;)
I'd never seen this behaviour before this last year .... it almost looks like tool use, the way it/they use the table to hold the seed still. We thought at first it was preparing the seed for its young to eat, but it continued through the winter.
K.
Original post below, very slightly modified
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We are fortunate enough to have a fairly wide range of birds come to our garden feeder. Over the last year I've observed what I thought was one great tit take a sunflower seed from the suspended squirrel-proof feeder, fly up to the tray/ledge of the bird table just above, hold the seed down with its foot on the ridge at the edge of the table and peck away to remove the outer parts of the seed and get to the kernel. It then flies away, presumably to eat this elsewhere, returns and goes through the process again.
Weirdly it still did this when we put sunflower seeds kernels in the feeder!
Today I saw 2 great tits doing this at the same time and realised that the "one" I'd been seeing must have been several different birds, unless one has learnt recently from the first one. But not all the great tits do it. We get large numbers of great tits and blue tits, a couple of coal tits, a few long-tailed and two marsh (I think!) tits as regular visitors, but it is only great tits behaving in this way.
Is this standard, normal behaviour? (I'm still a beginner at this birding lark really.) If so why don't any other tits do this, when they too eat the sunflower seeds?
K.
I'd never seen this behaviour before this last year .... it almost looks like tool use, the way it/they use the table to hold the seed still. We thought at first it was preparing the seed for its young to eat, but it continued through the winter.
K.
Original post below, very slightly modified
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We are fortunate enough to have a fairly wide range of birds come to our garden feeder. Over the last year I've observed what I thought was one great tit take a sunflower seed from the suspended squirrel-proof feeder, fly up to the tray/ledge of the bird table just above, hold the seed down with its foot on the ridge at the edge of the table and peck away to remove the outer parts of the seed and get to the kernel. It then flies away, presumably to eat this elsewhere, returns and goes through the process again.
Weirdly it still did this when we put sunflower seeds kernels in the feeder!
Today I saw 2 great tits doing this at the same time and realised that the "one" I'd been seeing must have been several different birds, unless one has learnt recently from the first one. But not all the great tits do it. We get large numbers of great tits and blue tits, a couple of coal tits, a few long-tailed and two marsh (I think!) tits as regular visitors, but it is only great tits behaving in this way.
Is this standard, normal behaviour? (I'm still a beginner at this birding lark really.) If so why don't any other tits do this, when they too eat the sunflower seeds?
K.