Bearded Tit with Sound 13cm - Soft Toy

Physical Characteristics
The Bearded Tit is a brown, long-tailed bird with a grey blue head, usually seen flying rapidly across the top of a reed bed. Males have black moustache-like markings rather than beards.

Habitat
Bearded Tits are found only in reed beds across Southern England and parts of Europe where they both feed and breed.

Behaviour
Bearded Tits are sociable and noisy, their 'ping'-style calls often being the first clue to their presence. They are particularly vulnerable to severe winters as they do not migrate to warmer climes and their population has declined in recent years.

Breeding
The Bearded Tit is a wetland specialist, breeding colonially in large reed beds by lakes or swamps.

Diet
Bearded Tits eat insects, insect larvae, spiders and seeds. It mainly eats reed aphids in summer and reed seeds in winter; its digestive system changing to cope with the very different seasonal diets.

Strange and Interesting Facts
The Bearded Tit is also known as the The Bearded Reedling, however despite its resemblance to other members of the Tit family, research actually showed it to be a unique songbird - no other living species seems to be particularly closely related to it.