Willow tit song

Sadly this is a sound that has vanished from much of the country. However, Durham remains a stronghold for this species (where, unusually, it occurs alongside marsh tit in some locations).

I was lucky enough to hear this bird singing briefly at Brasside Pond, on the outskirts of Durham City over Christmas 2024. I hear marsh tit regularly in France and when visiting Durham sometimes encounter calling willow tits, but it must have been a few decades since I actually heard one sing. The fact that this one was singing so close, on such a clear and calm day was a real bonus. The song has a rather mournful quality which I think is quite apt as it is often given in winter. It's less complex than the songs of blue, great and coal tit, consisting of simple repeated notes given in phrases of three or four. Structurally these notes are not a million miles from some marsh tit songs, but marsh tit song is delivered with greater urgency, and often has more notes per phrase. Here is the recording.

I love these rolling 'videos' from the Macaulay Library but they are not as good as a nice sonogram for showing the detail of the call. So, here's a couple of sonograms taken from this recording. The first shows a wider look at the call sequence with the second zooming in a little to highlight the detail of the individual notes.