IT LOOKS like tits are becoming latter-day canaries. While the songbirds famously gave coal miners warning of toxic gases, the blue tit and the great tit—two of Europe’s most attractive garden birds—could help keep tabs on pollution.
Tom Dauwe at the University of Antwerp in Belgium found that levels of heavy metals in the tail feathers of great tits and blue tits give a good picture of levels of pollution around where they live. Dauwe and his colleagues analysed adult tail feathers from 32 great tits and 8 blue tits caught in an area contaminated with lead, cadmium,…
