The Cheerful Cincia

Check an English bird book and they’ll probably tell you that the call of a Great Tit sounds like “Teacher, Teacher”. That’s not what I was taught in Wytham Woods in one of the places they’ve studied them for the longest. They said it sounds like “Peter, Peter”.

Italians hear it completely differently, given the range of sounds in their language. For them, it’s “Cincia, Cincia”, where cincia is pronounced like “Chin-Chah”.

The Italian name of the Great Tit is Cinciallegra, which means ‘Cheerful Cincia’.

This one was exactly that, and I’m very happy about it.