Long Tailed Tit Through The Window

A garden favourite of many twitchers, over the last few days a small flock of Long Tailed Tits have been perching outside our front window and sometimes appear to be looking in. It is most curious behaviour and my wife and I were at a loss to understand what was happening.

Photographing birds through a window is not the best way to capture them but I have also found it very hard to photograph these lovely, tiny animals so I took advantage of the opportunity. Their face to me is doll-like and resembles a mouse. In fact, the original name for this family of birds is 'Titmouse' and you can see why. They only weigh somewhere between 7-9g making them one of the smallest birds in the UK.

My wife, Julie - (playing Michaela Strachan to my Chris Packham!) - did some online research and  the activity of looking into windows has been observed elsewhere. The best explanation is that it is the mating season and the birds are reacting to their reflection and assuming it is a rival bird they need to see off.

There is one major advantage to the attraction of our windows. I have been trying to photograph these birds for some time. They have been rare in my garden for some years so when this flock arrived I was keen to get a good photograph. Knowing that they are regularly visiting my front garden allowed me to position myself and wait. As the photograph above shows, I was well rewarded for my patience.

These birds are sometimes described as a 'tiny ball of fluff' and they are very active. This makes them hard to photograph. In this case I am using a Panasonic G9 and the Lumix Leica 200/2.8 with the 1.4 teleconverter. In RAW mode the camera has a high speed capture mode of 20fps. My only issue was keeping the shutter speed up to a high level without compromising the image quality with too high an iso setting.

Their plumage is subtly coloured in greys, browns and blacks - and although not as colourful as Blue Tits or Great Tits they are still a very attractive bird to my eyes.

The bird is perching on a jasmine branch which is very slender - however it is not bending at all given its tiny weight. They have quite a loud high pitched voice when they call to each other.

In this pose you can see clearly the white central stripe on the head of the bird.

Hanging around outside our front window. My cats like to sit on a table on the other side and to say the least they also enjoy seeing these visitors!