The mysterious blue tit. Picture by Simeon Butts, of Telford

This tiny blue tit caused one Shropshire resident to look twice after his photograph appeared to show the bird with a long, deformed beak.

Its was happily flying about a Telford bird table when Simeon Butts caught it on camera.

And Mr Butts was convinced his photograph showed the blue tit with a beak more than an inch long.

He wondered whether the extra long bill might be a freak of evolution.

But John Hughes, development manager at Shropshire Wildlife Trust, who had a look at the photograph, said today: “It’s almost certainly got something in its beak. It’s really difficult to decide what it is.

“The reason I say that is because of Charles Darwin as one of the things Darwin looked at when in the Galapagos Islands were the finches.

“What he noticed about the finches particularly was that they were the same size and shape but the real difference was with their beaks.

“What they had done was adapted to take different food and you can see that in finches in this country which have different beaks depending on what they eat.”

Mr Hughes added: “Blue tits have tiny little beaks because what they tend to do is eat small insects.

“What that means is that if they had got a very distended beak like this one looks like, it would be unable to eat its food and it would die.

“You do get abnormal growths in birds’ beaks from time to time. I have seen it in crows and starlings.”

He added: “I showed this photograph to my colleague and he suggested it might be something like a shred of coconut in the bird’s beak. I think that could be it.”