Blue Tit or Long-tailed Tit?

These two get mixed up constantly. Here is what actually separates them, taken from each bird's own page.

The honest confusion is not the bird but the flock — a party working along a hedge sounds and moves like tits, and long-tailed tits do travel with them. Look at the silhouette rather than the colour: a blue tit is a compact blob with a stub of tail, a long-tailed tit trails a tail as long as the rest of it, and it is white-headed with a black eye stripe rather than blue-capped.

Side by side

	Blue Tit	Long-tailed Tit
Size	Smaller than a robin at about 12cm — one of the smallest birds at most feeders	One of Britain's smallest birds — about 14cm total, but over half of that is tail, and the body weighs under 10g.
Where you'll see it	Feeders, the outer twigs of trees and shrubs, and any hole it can peer into	Suet and sunflower feeders, hedges and the outer twigs of trees; almost never on the ground.
What it eats	Insects and caterpillars in summer; seeds, nuts and fat in winter	Insects, spiders and moth and butterfly eggs; increasingly suet and sunflower hearts in winter.
When	Resident, all twelve months	All year, but flock visits to gardens peak from October to March.
Status	Green listed	Green listed

Still not sure? Describe what you saw and we will rank every garden bird against it — including these two.

Both descriptions are taken from the species pages, which cite the BTO and RSPB. Reviewed 2026-09-20.