willow tit

Old Willow Tit holes may be used and enlarged further.

The most important feature of the site is its rich birdlife, including the rare willow tit.

In Europe, hybridisation with the Willow Tit has been recorded twice.

These might attract slightly more unusual species than regular garden visitors - including brambling or willow tit - and make for easier bird photography.

Birds to be seen are willow tits, woodcock, great spotted woodpeckers and willow warblers.

An excited jay squawking a raucous caw added to the disturbance, then a willow tit stridently announced its presence.

He produced a number of scientific works on the birdlife of the Alps, and was the first to describe the Willow Tit.

It is the southern counterpart of the Willow Tit P. montanus, and is often included in it as a subspecies.

At one time the Willow Tit was considered conspecific with the Black-capped Chickadee of North America due to their very similar appearance.

According to the RSPB, the Willow Tit is in rapid decline and is now considered a 'red status' bird.

Birds recorded on the site include the Willow Tit, Tree Pipit, European Nightjar and the Eurasian Sparrowhawk.

Locally rare species include the Eurasian sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and the willow tit (Parus montanus).

The Willow Tit often excavates its own nesting hole, even piercing hard bark; this is usually in a rotten stump or in a tree, more or less decayed.

The upper lake is fringed by oak, yew, beech and Scots pine trees, and provides habitat for willow tits and woodpeckers, with blackcaps visiting in the summer.

Numbers of many long-distance migrants (Cuckoo, Nightingale, Spotted Flycatcher, Pied Flycatcher) are continuing to drop, as are numbers of some woodland specialists like Willow Tit.

This bird's close resemblance to the Willow Tit can cause identification problems, especially in the United Kingdom where the local subspecies of the two are very similar (there, they were not recognised as separate species until 1897).

The area hosts fifteen raptor species and populations of bird species with limited distribution in Greece, such as the Hazel Grouse, Tengmalm's Owl, Wallcreeper and Willow Tit.

- The Willow Tit is referenced in one of the musical numbers in the comedic opera "The Mikado" written by Gilbert and Sullivan, (On a Tree By a River).

The moorhen flea's many hosts include the Common Moorhen, Eurasian Woodcock, grouse, European Robin, Goldcrest, Willow Tit and Eurasian Treecreeper.

Marsh and Willow Tits are difficult to identify on appearance alone; the races occurring in the UK (P. p. dresseri and P. m. kleinschmidti respectively) are especially hard to separate.