Wildlife in a Suburban Garden

In this part of the world Marsh Tits are one of the rarer species of tit, therefore it's always good when I see one. At my peregrine falcon nestsite I have been putting out a feeder in front of the hide just to make it a bit more interesting when there's not a lot going on. So far I've had some nice birds come to the feeder. There has been blue tits, great tits, great – spotted woodpeckers of both sexes, but so far no nuthatch which is a surprise. But yesterday I was really pleased when a pair of Marsh Tits came to the feeder. As well as being one of the less common tit species in the UK it's also one of the least colourful but nevertheless still very attractive. There are thought to be only around 40,000 breeding pairs of marsh tits in the country and an estimated 3 to 4,000,000 breeding pairs of blue tits. So you can see that your chances of seeing a Marsh Tit is quite slim compared to the much more common blue and great tits, in fact for every 100 blue tits there is a marsh tit! This picture was taken with my 300 lens and is not cropped, the bird being just 3 feet in front of me from inside the hide.