The Great Tit (Parus major) is Sweden's most common and familiar tit, with a black head, white cheeks, yellow underparts and a black breast stripe running from throat to undertail that is broader and unbroken in the male and narrower, sometimes interrupted, in the female — the most reliable way to sex the species in the field. The back is greenish-olive with blue-grey wings, and the tail is blue-grey with white outer feathers; juveniles show yellowish rather than pure white cheeks and duller overall colours until their autumn moult.
It is one of the most vocally versatile birds in Sweden, with individual males within a population capable of up to 40–50 distinct calls, deployed differently depending on context — one for ground predators, another for aerial ones, another to summon the flock. The familiar two-syllable metallic "ti-SA, ti-SA" song is heard from January onward, peaking in April–May, alongside a hard "pink-pink-pink" contact call. With an estimated 3–5 million breeding pairs, it is one of the country's most abundant birds, found throughout Sweden except the far northern mountains, in deciduous and mixed woodland, parks, gardens and at feeders. A cavity nester, it competes with Blue Tits, Nuthatches and Starlings for natural holes and nest boxes; the female lays 8–13 eggs, exceptionally up to 18, in April–June, incubates for 13–15 days, and both parents feed the chicks mostly on insects, timing the brood to coincide with the peak of caterpillar abundance on budding deciduous trees. A largely resident species that rarely strays far from its territory, it forms roving winter flocks with other tits and is a dominant visitor at garden feeders, favouring sunflower seeds, nuts and suet.
Read about this species in Swedish →