blue tits and parenting

[watervole]

I just timed the blue tits on their food hunt. One minute and ten seconds to go out, find a caterpillar, come back and feed it to the babies. Both parents managed it within that time.

Just imagine, they keep that up all day long. When I open my bedroom curtains in the morning, virtually the first thing I notice is one of the blue tits visiting the nest box below me.

How do they keep it up? They're tiny little things with an insatible family. I thought human babies were demanding, but even mine took a break of several hours between feeds!

Comments

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

They must eat on the wing. I always have a bag of peanuts hanging in the wild rose just outside my living room window which for 10months of the year is seldom without a blue tit on it. I haven't seen one since the breeding season started. In stead I get sparrows by the thousand judging from the number of fat balls, also hung in the rose, that they get through in a week. Six balls a week, the smaller birds of winter only get through 3.