My Saturday Bird this week is a young Eurasian Blue Tit.
The photo raises a couple of interesting points. The yellow plumage shows it is a young bird hatched from an egg in the spring. It has only been out of the nest for a couple of months. The bird has a ring on its leg which means that it was probably ringed while in the nest.
I did some research and the closest location I could find for the bird to be ringed was three miles away in a straight line. That means that this bird has already travelled a considerable distance in the short time since it left the nest.
The other interesting point is the birds activity. It’s pecking open an Oriental Poppy seed pod to get at the seeds inside. I had seen and photographed adult birds doing this previously but not young birds. So did this bird learn how to do this by watching an adult or is it instinctive behaviour?
