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Every day's a schoolday

Today I saw a bird in my garden I didn't recognise;  it looked like a great tit Parus major, but it had a lot more black on it.  It wasn't in either of my rather basic bird books, so I turned to the all-knowing Wikipedia.  Did you know there are 15 local sub-species of great tit around the world?  I didn't.  This one is native to the British Isles, it is called P. major newtoni and was first described in 1894.  Many of the sub-species inhabit islands or groups of islands.

My visitor inspected the nest box which has never been used since I put it up six years ago, so I'm hopeful we will be seeing more of each other when spring comes.

Would anyone like to continue this thread with unexpected facts they've recently discovered?

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