Blue tit feeder numbers fall by almost half, experts warn

Blue tits have long been one of our most familiar garden birds, swinging acrobatically from feeders and breaking into doorstep milk bottles.

But now the blue tit is slipping away from garden feeders in the face of changes to the way we feed birds and competition from newer arrivals, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has warned.

Its garden bird feeding survey, which records birds visiting feeders in 250 rural and urban gardens across Britain during the winter months, has revealed a 42 per cent decline in the number of blue tits in gardens over the past 40 years.

Other data has suggested early signs of a decline in the broader population of the birds, but nothing on the scale of the reduction in visiting garden feeders over the 40 years of the survey, the BTO's Tim Harrison said.

He added that the gentle but steady decline in blue tit numbers was "surprising".