Relationship With Humans
The Great Tit is a popular garden bird due to its acrobatic performances when feeding on nuts or seed. Its willingness to move into nest boxes has made it a valuable study subject in ornithology, and it is one of the best studied birds in the world. It has been particularly useful as a model for the study of the evolution of various life-history traits, particularly clutch size. A study of a literature database search found 1,349 articles relating to Parus major for the period between 1969 and 2002.
The Great Tit has generally adjusted to human modifications of the environment. It is more common and has better breeding success in areas with undisturbed forest cover, but it has adapted to human modified habitats. It can be very common in urban areas. For example, the breeding population in the city of Sheffield (a city of half a million people) has been estimated at 17,164 individuals. In adapting to human environments its song has been observed to change in noise-polluted urban environments. In areas with low frequency background noise pollution, the song has a higher frequency than in quieter areas. This tit has expanded its range, moving northwards into Scandinavia and Scotland, and south into Israel and Egypt. The total population is estimated at between 300–1,100 million birds in a range of 32.4 million km2 (12.5 million mi2). While there have been some localised declines in population in areas with poorer quality habitats, its large range and high numbers mean that the Great Tit is not considered to be threatened, and it is classed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
Read more about this topic: Great Tit
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with, relationship and/or humans:
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
“...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 14:7-10.