Willow tit, willow tit - are you there?

I spent a most enjoyable morning in North West Hampshire today surveying woodland for willow tit. The willow tit has declined alarmingly of late and now seems to be absent from much of the south east of England, although North West Hampshire and parts of Wiltshire do seem to be hanging onto them.

Willow tit are quite difficult to identify during most of the year as they are remarkably similar to the more common Marsh tit, however in the spring they have a very distinctive call which once learnt, can separate them easily from Marsh tit. However, at low densities, it is my belief that they don’t bother calling that often. This was confirmed to me a couple of years ago when I spent an hour in a wood where I was fairly certain Willow tit presided, but having heard nothing at all, I left the wood and walked across a small field to another nearby wood. As I entered the “new” wood, a willow tit called and almost immediately one replied from the wood that I had just spent an hour in!!

As a consequence of this little episode, I now equip myself with a small IPod and speaker with the recording of a willow tit song. I walk through the wood, stopping now and then to play the recording. Usually, if willow tit are present they respond by singing back almost immediately. Some people don’t like this method as they believe it might disturb the birds, however, as soon as I get a response, I stop playing the song and move onto another part of the wood, so I really don’t think it can possibly have any detrimental impact on the bird at all.

I was accompanied by the estate owner this morning, who was absolutely delighted to hear and see Willow tit, which he had not observed before. This particular estate manages their woods very well, with a mosaic of coppiced blocks rotating around the woodland, so that they have areas of recent coppice, middle aged coppice and blocks which are ready to be coppiced once again. They also leave some bits of the woods completely unmanaged. I congratulated him on his excellent management and told him that this is why he still has willow tit, because they like thick shrubby areas to forage in, but also need unmanaged areas of old dead wood to excavate out their own nest holes.

We had located 4 calling males in all by the time that rain stopped play, which just shows, if you manage the habitat correctly, the wildlife responds!