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”.

Great Tit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (C) David Bailey (not the)

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.

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