The Great Tit is a familiar bird on our bird feeders and in our gardens and woods, and its song is pretty familiar too. If you aren’t already familiar with it, then if you keep your ears open in the right sorts of places you will hear its song at this time of year and through the spring and early summer, and less often throughout the year.
What does a singing Great Tit sound like? Well, it’s not a very complex song; almost always it is a string of two-note phrases normally written as something like Tee-cher, Tee-cher, tee-cher and Great Tits can go on singing those phrases in long bursts and over and over again.
Here’s a 16-second recording by Benoit Van Hecke of a male Great Tit singing in France (and only a few days ago) on the marvellous xenocanto website.
Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher indeed. That may be a French Great Tit but it sounds just the same to me as a Great Tit I can hear from my back garden quite often at the moment.
That two note repeated song is characteristic of Great Tits and you’ll hear it a lot.
Here’s another Great Tit song that sounds pretty typical too.
This one is from the UK, from Yorkshire in May 2015 but I hope it sounds pretty similar to the earlier French bird.
And here’s an undated German Great Tit:
Similar again, I hope you’d agree, but this one is a bit slower and less urgent. But it’s still the basic Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher model, isn’t it?
Now, if all Great Tits always went Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher and no other species ever went Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher then we’d have got this one, commonly uttered, commonly heard, simple song from a common bird pretty much nailed. But, although it is almost that simple, it is not quite that simple, and I cannot mislead you because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at nights if I did.
First, there are a few other species, not many, and they aren’t anywhere near as common as Great Tits, and one of them isn’t singing much at this time of year anyway, that do a version of Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher. But let’s ignore them for now. I will certainly come back to one of them another time. Most Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher songs are performed by Great Tits.
But do all Great Tits go Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher ? Not exactly. Most do, at least something similar, but not all. Don’t blame me, this wonderful variety, or irritating confusion, isn’t my fault it is the process of thousands and thousands of generations of Great Tits evolving under natural selection and that really isn’t my fault.
Some Great Tits go Cher-tee, cher-tee, cher-tee, cher-tee and others go Cher-cher, cher-cher, cher-cher or Tee-tee, tee-tee, tee-tee. But unless you start listening hard you’ll hardly notice. You’ll hear lots of repeated two-note phrases and think ‘Great Tit – I know that song!’.
But if you really do listen carefully, you will find that an individual Great Tit doesn’t stick either to Tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher or one of the other variants all the time, some Great Tits have two or more distinct song types and they switch between them. One of my local (and by local I mean ‘heard from the garden’ not a short hike away) Great Tits switches between at least two song types. He often does it when he changes perch – if he flies a fair distance he seems to be more likely to switch song types than if he sits still.
Sit and listen, and you will notice this too. And now is definitely the time to do it as there aren’t too many different birds singing so you can, perfectly feasibly listen to one Great Tit as he goes about his business (and that isn’t a careless use of ‘he’ it’s almost certainly a male if it is singing).
I used to spend some of my time studying Great Tit songs around Oxford when I worked in the Zoology Department there. I was a junior research assistant at the time but I’ve got my name on a few scientific papers to do with Great Tit song so I’ll definitely come back to this subject again (and again) but let’s leave it there for today.
So, I think we’ve got to the point where you can go out and listen for a Great Tit and possibly recognise one. And then you could listen to it and really get to know it. But you’ll probably find that your Great Tit has more than one version of its song. Try it and see – it’s fun. All this stuff has been going on around you all your life but you may never have stopped to listen. Give it a try.
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It’s always been just a squeaky bicycle pump to me!
Squeaky wheel barrow
Isn’t Xeno-canto marvellous! A recording with all those other background sounds and songs takes you right there into the outdoors as if you were there listening at the time of recording. On a dull windy, wet day like today when the brook through the garden is a flooding torrent of tea coloured water and our ditch is contiguous with the Severn 400 m away ( no the houses are dry!) even the simple song of the Great Tit is hugely joyous and uplifting. Thanks Mark!
Mark, thanks for this chapter and verse on Great Tit song.
Keep them coming; bird vocalisations are a never ending source of fascination. Yes, it can get a bit confusing re the odd virtuoso performance but that makes things even more interesting.
And then there are Great Tits who sometimes appear to answer and counter-sing against the Coal Tit’s slightly higher pitched, two-note song. Are these particular individuals also confused or just having a bit of sport at our expense?
But they do make all sorts of sounds – over the years I’ve learnt that if you hear a quite loud, unfamiliar call and manage to track the exciting, unexpected rare bird down – its always a Great Tit.
My experience too which I have always pointed ut to my bird groups.
Continuing the transport theme, it’s always reminded me of the noise my car indicator made in the 1980s before I got a more refined model.
Transport theme again: Great tits and other birds with territories by busy roads are adapting by upping the pitch and volume of their songs in order to be heard better.
Our double-glazed houses are insulated against sound as well as temperature, I was amazed this morning to be woken up by a Great tit really close. Then I realised Lyn had beaten me to your blog this morning! Outside a little later the Great tits were hard at it as was a Goldcrest drowning out the wind!
To me, the super loud and vocal chap in my garden this afternoon sounded like a smoke alarm that was giving off the signal it needed it’s batteries changing! Tee-cher x 4, silence for long enough to think it’s stopped then tee-cher x 4, silence…and repeat. 🙂
Julie – thanks for that! Good comparison.
Lately especially this Spring I often hear a Great Tit calling from the tree outside my front door very early in the morning before or at the dawn chorus. It is a lovely call. If I may point out the German Great Tit’s call is a lot “sharper” than his counterparts in France and northern England. It has been said that species of birds in different parts of Britain and elswhere throughout Europe seem to have their own “accents” from one area to another and even have their own “dialects” in different parts of Wales for instance
Brian – there certainly are dialects in bird song, but there is also an awful lot of individual variation, and indeed variation within a single individual. Enjoy!