Bizarre blue tit shows off massive beak
Bird watchers at the Lochwinnoch nature reserve in Scotland have snapped photos of a blue tit with a remarkable beak about four times its normal size.
Ornithologists are baffled by the bird, photographed above by Gordon McCall, because the oversized protuberance ought to have prevented it from feeding – but incredibly the tit seems to be managing just fine.
“Blue tits are about 12cm long, from the tip of their tail to the tip of their beak, and the beak on this one is about 4cm long, when normally it would be less than 1cm,” Lochwinnoch assistant site manager Paula Baker told the Scotsman.
“It has been causing quite a stir and it has done really well to survive. It stands out from the crowd at our feeding station. It has just been using the side of its mouth to feed, picking things up that have fallen to the ground.”
Baker said the bird’s bottom bill had originally been as long as the top bill but the bottom one has come off.
But Kirsi Peck of the RSPB warned that the bird was likely to encounter problems as the beak grows even longer.
“It’s likely to continue to grow, and unfortunately, it will eventually affect the blue tit’s ability to feed and preen. It’s really quite amazing that it is doing so well at the moment.”