Open nesting in Great Tits Parus major

The ornithological journals tend to publish the first observation of a fact or behaviour (e.g. Rolando & Zunino, 1992; Putnam, 1996; Dijkstra et al., 1997; Lozano & Lemon, 1998), but later observations of the same topic are usually not published, or they are published in very local journals, so it is difficult to asses how frequent it is. We describe here two cases of a typical hole-nesting bird, the Great Tit Parus major, using open nests to breed, and review the literature of this open-nesting behaviour by Great Tits

Monros, J.S., Gomez, J., Encabo, S.I., Bradt, S., Barba, E. and Gil-Delgado, J.A.., Ardeola 46(1), 1999, 89-91