Waking up to the songs of birds and having a delightful time in your back garden can be a great start to your day. Watching them flit and fly from branch to branch while swooping down to snake on a worm or bug can be great entertainment while you sit out enjoying the sun.

But for some people, despite both a bird bath and bird feeder taking pride of place at the heart of a garden the birds never seem to stick around.

Blue tits in particular can be a favourite of both gardeners and twitchers, with the colourful mess of blues, yellows, whites and greens giving them a distinct look that makes them easily spottable.

The species loved to nest in cosy nooks and crannies, often in hollowed-out trees or a cosy birdbox, with the birds taking around six weeks to properly fill their homes with grass, twigs and moss to make them nice and comfortable.

But if you want blue tits to make your garden their new home there are a few simple tricks you can do to try and increase your odds.

According to avian experts from Wildlife and Birdcage, the first step in attracting a family of blue tits is to give them a place to call home.

They suggest either making or buying a birdbox with a small hole around 32mm wide before positioning it around two and a half metres high on a sturdy tree or fence, with the species particularly enjoying the slanted sort.

Blue tits are omnivores so enjoy a mixed diet of bugs and insects as well as fruit and seeds, they are particularly fond of caterpillars, sunflower seeds and peanuts.

Scattering a few bird feeders, as well as suet fat balls, berry pellets and mealworms for blue tits to chow down will help attract the illusive creatures.

Ideally, the food should be around five feet high beside a bird bath or on a bird table as it is rare they fly down to eat off of the floor.

The RHS advises a squirrel-proof feeder, that you often move around your garden, to reduce a pile-up of bird poo underneath the device. They also claim that insect cakes, made up of suet, seeds and ground-up dried insects are a particular favourite of blue tits.

For those opting to use dried insects to keep their birds full and well-fed, leaving them to soak in water beforehand can be very effective in the spring and summer as the birds can then feed them to their young and save them a hard day's work searching for soft food.