How to Attract Blue Tits to Your Garden (Food, Feeders and Nest Boxes)

Updated 01 September 2026 · 6 min read

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If you want them to nest as well as feed, there’s one number that matters more than anything else: a 25mm entrance hole. Get that wrong and you’ll get great tits or house sparrows instead.

Identifying a blue tit

Look for: a blue cap, white cheeks with a dark line through the eye, a yellow-green back and a yellow breast. Blue wings and tail.

Most often confused with: the great tit, which is noticeably larger, has a black cap rather than blue, and a bold black stripe running down the centre of its yellow breast. If there’s a thick black line down the middle, it’s a great tit.

Coal tits are smaller and duller, with a white patch on the back of the neck and no blue or yellow to speak of.

Males and females look very similar. Males tend to have a slightly brighter blue cap, but it’s not something you can reliably judge in the garden.

What blue tits eat

Insects and caterpillars for most of the year — a pair feeding chicks can bring back hundreds of caterpillars a day. In autumn and winter they switch to seeds and nuts, which is when garden feeders genuinely matter.

The three that work best:

• Sunflower hearts — the single most reliable blue tit food. High in oil, easy to handle, no husk waste
• Peanuts — high fat and protein. Mesh feeder only, and aflatoxin-free from a proper bird food supplier
• Suet and fat balls — highest calorie option, and the one that stays recommended year-round when seeds and peanuts pause between 1 May and 31 October

The feeder they prefer

Blue tits are acrobatic. They cling upside down without apparent effort, which means hanging feeders suit them perfectly — unlike robins and blackbirds, which can’t manage them at all.

A hanging tube feeder filled with sunflower hearts is the standard setup. A mesh peanut feeder and a suet cage alongside it will cover everything they want.

Note their feeding style: a blue tit rarely sits and eats. It darts in, takes one seed, and flies off to a branch to deal with it before returning. So a feeder that looks quiet may actually be busy — they’re just quick.

Getting blue tits to nest: the 25mm rule

This is where most people go wrong, and it’s a genuinely easy fix.

Nest box entrance hole sizes determine which species can use the box:

A 28mm or 32mm hole doesn’t exclude blue tits — but it does let in larger, more dominant species that will take the box first. If blue tits specifically are what you want, buy 25mm.

Where to put the box

• Height: 2 to 4 metres up
• Direction: facing somewhere between north and east. This avoids both the strongest midday sun and the wettest prevailing winds
• Tilt: angled very slightly forward so rain runs off the front rather than in
• Approach: a clear flight path in, with no branch immediately below that a cat could use
• Away from feeders — nesting birds don’t want a crowd outside the front door

When to put it up

Autumn or winter is ideal. Birds prospect for sites well before spring, and a box that’s been in place for a few months looks established rather than new. Aim to have boxes up by mid-February at the latest — National Nest Box Week runs from 14 February each year for exactly this reason.

The caterpillar timing problem

Worth knowing, because it explains a lot about blue tit behaviour.

Blue tits time their breeding to coincide with the peak abundance of caterpillars on oak and other trees — a window that lasts only a couple of weeks. A pair will lay a large clutch, sometimes eight to twelve eggs, and gamble everything on hitting that window.

Get it right and most chicks fledge. Miss it — because a warm early spring shifted the caterpillars earlier than the birds anticipated — and a whole brood can fail. This mismatch is one of the more closely studied effects of changing climate on UK birds.

Practical consequence: avoid insecticides. If you want blue tits to breed successfully in your garden, the caterpillars matter more than the feeder.

How to attract them: the checklist

1. Hang a tube feeder with sunflower hearts, about 2m from cover
2. Add a suet cage — covers the summer months when seed pauses
3. Put up a 25mm nest box, 2-4m up, facing north to east, by February
4. Provide water in a shallow dish, changed daily
5. Stop using insecticides — caterpillars are what feed the chicks
6. Plant native trees and shrubs if you have room — hawthorn, birch and oak all support caterpillars
7. Clean feeders weekly and move them to a new spot each time
8. Be patient — a new feeder can take several weeks to be found

Common questions

Related guides

• Common garden birds in the UK: how to identify your visitors
• Nest boxes: when to put one up and where
• Best bird food for winter: what to put out and what to skip
• Types of bird feeder: which one should you actually buy?

Sources: RSPB species information and nest box guidance; British Trust for Ornithology Nest Box Challenge; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.