Pair of great tits in my hand

[Poacher]

OK, Mad Doug Biker (not forgetting Fnaar), you asked for it.....

The female is the rather startled one in the background. She was more cautious than the male, and had just plucked up courage to land, but was taking her time over selecting a mealworm, when the male came zooming in like an exocet from the far end of the garden and hustled her out of the way.

This is her just before the top photo - she has a thinner, and slightly zig-zag black line down her middle.

While the male has a larger and wider marking.
Hand-feeding live mealworms may seem unnatural, but ensured that the youngsters had a good feed. Leaving mealworms in a pot simply fed a very greedy blackbird which would just trough the lot!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Lovely!! We have a small cage we put over where the mealworms are so that the small birds can get in but the pigeons can't.

 

[tyred]

Disappointed Not what I had hoped for.

But wonderful pics

 

[Melonfish]

those are some great tits.

 

[addictfreak]

No comment, the last time I mentioned Tits in the pro cycling thread they nearly imploded! No sense of humour in there.

 

[Sara_H]

Nice pics.

 

[Panter]

That's fantastic! gorgeous pics, thanks for sharing

 

[jayonabike]

Thread title of the year.

 

[coffeejo]

 

[Spinney]

How long did it take you to get them to feed out of your hand?

 

[matthat]

Nice pics!!

 

[smokeysmoo]

Where's @Fnaar

 

[Archie_tect]

He's been eating mealy worms and is quietly being violently sick out the back of the cafe, by the wheely bin.

 

[annedonnelly]

Lovely!! We have a small cage we put over where the mealworms are so that the small birds can get in but the pigeons can't.

Do be careful with those cages - there are reports of hedgehogs getting stuck in them - they get part way but can't reverse because of their spines. I guess you could move the cage at night when hedgehogs are most likely to be about.

 

[Fnaar]

Where's @Fnaar

He's been eating mealy worms and is quietly being violently sick out the back of the cafe, by the wheely bin.

When faced with perfection, like the thread title, I must, like you, simply sit back and admire.

Or, I could offer a pedantic grammatical analysis of the title: it works, because both 'pair' and 'tits' are nouns, both of which could be preceded by the adjective 'great'. If 'great' goes before 'pair', ambiguity is lost, and the title must therefore refer to breasts. Ambiguity (and therefore humour) is maintained by putting 'great' before 'tits', which, by coincidence, gives us the compound noun 'great tit', pertaining to the nomenclature of a particular example (parus major) of the family Paridae.