14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at Oxford University say that, at least as far as great tits in the United Kingdom are concerned, the old saying that “birds of a feather flock together” is very much true.
Writing in the journal Ecology Letter, the researchers say that, by the looks of it, birds belonging to this species can be either shy or outgoing.
What is interesting is that their personality influences their choice of friends and mates.
Thus, shy great tits tend to mainly interact with others of their kind. Besides, they form strong relationships with their peers and mates.
Extrovert great tits, on the other hand, prefer to be independent. Specifically, although they have more friends and mates than the birds in the first category, their bond with them is by no means a strong one.
“Measuring the social networks we could see that bolder birds tended to hop between foraging flocks and have short-term foraging associations, while shy birds tended to maintain a foraging association over a long time,” researcher Lucy Aplin says, as cited by Daily Mail.
“Hopping between many flocks may increase risks for bolder birds, but might maximise rewards through improving their social position and giving them better access to information, such as the location of food,” the researcher further explains.
The specialists reached these conclusions concerning great tits and their behavior while monitoring birds belonging to this species that came to feed at 65 different stations throughout the course of an entire winter.