Bottletops and Bluetits

[The Woodman]

As I was picking up the milk from the doorstep yesterday, it occured to me that I haven't seen any milk bottle tops pecked open by Bluetits for years.

We have a very healthy population of the birds who feed within two metres of the front door.

Does this activity still go on?

Does my memory serve me right in thinking that tits only did it when the weather was much colder as it is now?

[aeshna5]

Not sure if the activity still continues, but the change is no doubt due to the massive change in US! Household milk deliveries have dramatically declined as most people now get cheap milk from the supermarket; I don't know anyone down my road who has milk delivered.

Also those people who do still have milk delivered often have the milk supplied in plastic containers, so the numbers of glass bottles with piercable tops are probably quite few, though I can't speak for other parts of the country.

[The Woodman]

I did wonder about that aeshna. We are fortunate to have a traditional delivery in glass bottles.

[Cowgirl]

Yes the practice still continues!
We get milk delivered to my work via local milkman (in bottles) & regularly got the tops broken into. Had to buy a plastic box to put the milk in. Thank goodness they haven't figured out how to get the lid off yet!

[solus]

As Aeshna said, the practice has largely died out over much of the country because very few people have milk delivered to their doorsteps anymore, it being so much cheaper from the supermarkets and (now it's all homogenised) with a longer shelf-life. Does doorstep-delivered milk in glass bottles still come as pasteurised but not homogenised because it used to be the cream on the top that the tits mainly went for.... ?

Personally I really miss not having the cream off the top of the milk on breakfast cereal. It's just not the same as it used to be.

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by solus

Does doorstep-delivered milk in glass bottles still come as pasteurised but not homogenised because it used to be the cream on the top that the tits mainly went for.... ?

(

And they knew the difference between Gold top - Full Cream - and other sorts.

[Madelinew]

I miss the cream on the top of the milk too - spoilsport healthy eaters!

As for tits raiding the milk, I seem to remember that it started very suddenly in the 70s and spread quickly throughout the country having never happened before. Anyone else remember that?

[loripo]

This is from 'British Bird Lovers'
By the 1950s the entire UK blue tit population had learnt how to pierce the bottle tops to reach the cream, whereas the robins never did. Occasionally an individual robin learnt how to pierce the milk bottle seal but the skill never spread to the whole population as it did with blue tits.

Blue tits, as a species, had gone through an extraordinary learning process. Although individual robins could be as innovative as blue tits they had not passed on what they had learnt to other robins. The difference between the two birds could not be attributed to their ability to communicate. Blue tits and robins communicate in similar ways through colour, behaviour, movement and song. The difference could only be explained in the way blue tits pass on their skills from one individual bird to the species as a whole.

When bringing up their chicks blue tits will live together in couples. Once the young blue tits are flying and feeding by themselves blue tits will move about in flocks of up to ten birds. The flocks remain intact and will stay together for two to three months.
Clever little bird-brains