How to keep the Great Tit? A detailed guide to practical keeping techniques

The Great Tit, also known as the Zigui bird, white-faced tit, zhizhihei (xuxuhei, yuzihei), zhipa (xupa) and so on. People keep Great Tits mainly to give other cage birds a "mouth-call" to learn from. In fact, the Great Tit likes to live in towns and cities. If the greenery is well developed and more artificial nest boxes are hung up, its calls can be heard everywhere, and cage birds can easily learn them, so there is no need to keep one specially.

Morphological characteristics of the Great Tit

The Great Tit is the largest bird in the tit family. Its body length is about 13 cm, bill length 10 mm, wing 66.5 mm, tail 50 mm, tarsus 18 mm. The top of the head is black with a blue gloss, and the cheeks are white. The upper back is yellow-green.

1. The back, both shoulders and upper tail coverts are grayish blue; the black on the back between the hindneck is separated by a narrow white transverse band.

2. The central pair of tail feathers is dark grayish blue with black shafts; the inner webs of the remaining tail feathers are black, and the outer webs are blue-black. The flight feathers are blackish brown.

3. The chin, throat and upper breast are black, with a slight metallic sheen.

4. The belly is white, with a black longitudinal band running down the center from the upper breast backward, connecting with the black under-tail coverts. This black stripe is paler in the female. The eyes are brown, and the bill and feet are black.

Living habits of the Great Tit

The Great Tit is a very lively small bird, seen in mountain forests and courtyards alike. It moves nimbly and often hops constantly, clinging to tree trunks or among shrubs to seek small insects and insect eggs for food. Its flight is wavy, and when perched in a tree it calls constantly, with a call resembling "zhizhi (huhu) hei, xuhu heiheihei" or "huhupa", which is why in Changli, Hebei, people call it the "zhi (zai) pa bird". In the North China area it breeds from about March to August. Apart from living in pairs during the breeding season, it usually moves about in small flocks of three to five. The nest is built of moss, grass stems, feathers and so on in tree holes, bamboo holes or wall crevices; it does not build nests on branches.

Although the Great Tit is very small, a clutch can contain as many as 6-9 eggs. The eggs are pinkish white and densely covered with reddish brown spots. Incubation is mainly done by the female, while feeding the nestlings is mainly done by the male.

Feeding and management of the Great Tit

Although the Great Tit is rather impatient by nature, it is easy to tame, and good results can be achieved whether raising young birds or adults. It is easy to catch Great Tits with mist nets, trap cages and so on, but a "decoy bird" (commonly called a "youzi") is needed. Newly caught birds must be switched to new food. At first feed them flour worms or other larvae, and place the worms on a porridge-like artificial feed. When the Great Tit eats the worms, it will swallow the feed along with them, and in this way it will gradually accept the food.

For keeping Great Tits, tit cages, robin cages, canary cages and siskin cages can be used. The feed is made by mixing soybean flour, corn flour and peanut meal in a ratio of 3:3.2, adding an appropriate amount of cooked egg yolk, and often giving some flour worms. Vitamin-rich vegetable foods should also be given in appropriate amounts. Some people use white-eye powder for feeding, and the results are also very good. In winter, hang a small piece of raw lard in the cage for the bird to peck at, which can enhance its cold resistance and make the feathers glossy. In winter, appropriately increase the proportion of peanut meal in the feed, or crack open a walnut and put it in the cage for the bird to peck at by itself.

The rest of the management methods are nothing special; just manage them by conventional methods.