Animal of the Week -- September 7, 2009

Time flies when one is having fun, also when one is flying oneself. It's been so long largely because I have been doing my bit to entice tropical animals into the temperate zones, to increase habitat for drought tolerant plants in the tropics, and to make the Maldives substantially damper. But the upside to my enormous carbon footprint is that I have seen loads of amazing animals -- from right whales in Cape Town to marmots in the Swiss Alps. So what wonder is this week's animal? What can possibly be remarkable enough to beat whales and marmots out of the AOTW title?

Well, this week's animal, the first for a good many months is Parus major (great tit). This small and typically insectivorous bird has sealed the prestigious AOTW slot following the observations made of Hungarian tits published in Biology Letters this week. During the cold, Hungary, winter months, when other food were scarce, some Hungarian birds were seen to turn on bats for food. Preying on hibernating pipistrelles, the tits would the aerial mammals to death then eat the tastiest bits. There is a video of the birds in action in this news story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8245165.stm), although for all the fidelity of the video the bird could be pecking a child's shoe. The photo further down the page of the aftermath is much more graphic.

This behaviour does not appear to be that widespread, perhaps a singular quirk of that particular Hungarian population of tits.

Great tits can be found from western Europe to south Indonesia. Residents of the UK will be more than familiar with great tits, as they are one of the most common garden birds. With their green back and bright yellow underparts (or underpants as I always read it), they are instantly recognisable and can easily be distinguished from their relatives in the UK because they are the largest in the group... although I always thought the Royal Family were the biggest tits in the UK.