Great Tit vs Northern Gannet
Parus major compared with Morus bassanus
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Attribute | Great Tit | Northern Gannet |
|---|---|---|
| Scientific Name | Parus major | Morus bassanus |
| Order | Passeriformes | Suliformes |
| Family | Paridae | Sulidae |
| Conservation Status | Least Concern | Least Concern |
| Length | 14.0 cm (5.5 in) | 93.0 cm (36.6 in) |
| Wingspan | 24.0 cm (9.4 in) | 180.0 cm (70.9 in) |
| Weight | 18.0 g (0.63 oz) | 3000.0 g (105.82 oz) |
| Diet | Insects and spiders in summer, seeds and nuts in winter. A frequent and dominant visitor … | Shoaling fish, especially mackerel, herring, and capelin. Plunge-dives from heights of 30 meters at speeds … |
| Clutch Size | 3-18 | 1 |
| Population Trend | — | — |
Size Comparison
Habitat Comparison
Great Tit
Deciduous and mixed woodland, parks, gardens, and hedgerows. Readily uses nest boxes. Highly adaptable to human environments.
Northern Gannet
Open ocean and coastal waters. Breeds in dense colonies on steep rocky islands and sea stacks.
Song & Call Comparison
Great Tit
A repetitive, teacher-teacher 'tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher'. Also gives ringing 'pink-pink' alarm. Highly versatile singer; over 40 song variants recorded from a single male.
Northern Gannet
Loud, harsh 'urrah-urrah' grunting and croaking at breeding colonies on sea stacks. Also gives a softer 'karrr' in flight. Large colonies are extremely noisy during the breeding season.
Geographic Range & Migration
Great Tit
Widespread across Europe and Asia from Britain to Japan, and south to North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Northern Gannet
North Atlantic, breeding from Newfoundland and Gulf of St. Lawrence to Norway, Iceland, and Britain. Winters at sea south to the tropics.
Conservation Status
Great Tit
Northern Gannet
How to Tell Them Apart
Great Tit
Blue-black head with white cheeks. Olive-green back, yellow underparts with a broad black central stripe. White wing bar and blue-grey tail.
Short, stout, dark bill
Northern Gannet
Brilliant white body with black wingtips and a golden-yellow wash on the head and nape. Blue-grey bill with dark lines and pale blue eye-ring.
Long, straight, pointed, pale blue-grey bill with serrated edges
About These Birds
Great Tit
The great tit is the largest European tit and one of the most studied wild birds in the world. Research at Wytham Woods in Oxford has monitored great tit populations since the 1940s, contributing enormously to ecology and evolution. These innovative birds famously learned to open milk bottle tops in 20th-century Britain.
Northern Gannet
The northern gannet is a spectacular plunge-diver, folding its two-meter wingspan into an arrow shape to hit the water at up to 100 km/h. Air sacs under the skin and a reinforced skull protect it from the impact. Bass Rock in Scotland hosts over 150,000 gannets, the largest single colony of any seabird in the world.