The First Ladybird Book of British Birds – #4 The Blue Tit

Leafing through this 1950s Ladybird book is fascinating. Today I’ve come to the Blue Tit:

The Blue Tit - Ladybird Book of British Birds - The Hall of Einar

Here’s my childhood sketch of Blue Tits. I was twelve:

Blue Tits - The Hall of Einar - (c) David Bailey (not the)

They are fabulously entertaining birds.

And here’s one of my favourite recent digital photographs of a Blue Tit, forty years later:

Blue Tits - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

Here’s my drawing of a Blue Tit from when I first got a set of Rotring pens for Christmas when I was 13 years old:

Blue Tit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)

And here’s my first ever photograph of a Blue Tit after I’d treated myself to a telephoto lens a year ago:

Blue Tit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)

This lovely little bird is very common in gardens and towns and will eat almost anything.

That still seems to be true over sixty years later.

Forty years ago I drew a diagram of a Blue Tit and noted when I’d seen one in my nature notebooks:

Blue Tit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)

Here’s the full story:

Blue Tits – forty years ago in my nature notebooks

In my local country park they have routered portraits of birds and I love this one of the Blue Tit:

Blue Tit - The Hall of Einar - copyright David Bailey (not the)

Unfortunately I then noticed a small detail on the portrait of a Sparrowhawk:

Sparrowhawk - The Hall of Einar - copyright David Bailey (not the)

In closeup their beaks look as metallic as their leg rings:

Blue Tits - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

I love the period detail in the Ladybird book added by:

They are also very fond of pecking off the caps of milk-bottles when left on the doorstep in the morning.

How many people under the age of thirty even know what that sentence means?

Blue Tit - The Hall fo Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

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