This series involves an area that we love with beautiful paths and walks in the Hampshire countryside along with our love of birds. Each cache has information relating to a different bird, many of which will be present along the trail. The First Time Finder is a key fob featuring each particular bird apart from the micro caches which are all creatures that sustain our bird life. The information is provided by the wonderful book 'Tweet of the Day' by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss. We hope that the walks and information encourage others to learn about the wonderfully diverse bird life that we enjoy.
Caterpillar (food stuff of the Great Tit!):
Cutting through the rumble of city traffic and the constant hum of the urban jungle comes one of our most familiar bird sounds: the ‘tea-cher, tea-cher’ song of the great tit. This metallic, rhythmic sound is instantly recognizable, and you can hear it in our towns, cities and countryside on mild winter days from mid-December onwards. It’s the origin of the old country names ‘saw sharpener’ and ‘carpenter bird’, and has also been compared with a squeaky bicycle pump. But great tits have more than one string to their bow, and that well-known song is only one of at least forty different vocalizations they make; each bird has a repertoire of up to eight different songs. No wonder that when even experienced birders hear a bird call or song they can’t quite place, it often turns out to be just another great tit. The explanation for this huge variety of songs is known as the ‘Beau Geste Hypothesis’, after P.C. Wren’s 1924 novel about the French Foreign Legion. In the novel, the eponymous hero props up the bodies of dead soldiers around the walls of a besieged fort to suggest to the enemy that it is better defended than it really is. In a similar way, a great tit with a large repertoire may be able to persuade rival males that his territory is defended by more birds than just him, prompting them to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The great tit’s appearance matches its crisp, clear song: its black cap, yellow belly and white cheeks make it unmistakable. It is also very common, having been one of the most successful species in adapting to life alongside us, in our gardens. As birds that normally nest in holes in trees, they have readily taken to breeding in nestboxes and arrive at feeders almost as soon as we hang them up. Now that they have become our neighbours, we can gain insights into their complex courtship behaviour: for example, male great tits will try to attract a passing female by peering out of the entrance of their nest-hole and moving their heads back and forth, flashing their white cheek-patches like a semaphore signal. If that doesn’t work, they can always try singing . . .