Great Tit
Squeaky bicycle pump, confusion artist
Among seasoned bird-listeners there is a rule of thumb: if you can’t tell what it is, it’s probably a great tit.
This is not to say that the great tit it always a mystery. It fact it has a wonderfully clear and teachable song, that actually sounds like ‘teacher teacher’.
The signature mechanical rhythm is often likened to a squeaky bicycle pump.
But they do like to muck around with it. In the following example it’s still got the mechanical quality, but the emphasis is different.
And this one’s added an extra note giving a bouncier rhythm.
All very creative, and many a human neck has been strained in the act of trying to get a glimpse of what was, in the end, ‘just a great tit’.
Confusion artistry aside, the classic see-saw sound can be hear from parks, gardens, and most other places with deciduous trees, from late winter.
And joining the club that likes to go ‘tchink! tchink!’ (club members also include blackbird, starling, chaffinch) great tits use this piercing alarm call.
You can hear from a few seconds in how they pair the exclamations with a rough chatter. With a bit of imagination, you may hear them shout ‘help! help!’, then furiously shake a pair of tiny maracas.
There’s a new Shriek of the Week every Friday. If you know someone who might like a dose of birdsong in their inbox, please pass this along.
Would you like to go all-in learning the sounds of birds with me this Spring? The British Birdsong 101 course begins later this month, featuring the sounds of more than 50 species, with downloadable audio lessons, live group practice sessions and ID support throughout.
See the Birdsong Academy site for more details and how to register.
Thanks to Fintan O’Brien and the British Library archive for their great tit recordings. To hear many, many weird and wonderful variant calls and examples of their advanced mimicry skills, dive into the great tit pages at xeno-canto.