Bird-loving Shropshire Star readers have been flocking to send us their photographs of blue tits with long beaks – but now we have received pictures of a blue tit boasting a crossed beak.

John Luscombe, of Childs Ercall, near Market Drayton, fed this little chap all through last winter – probably keeping him alive.

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“He had great difficulty feeding,” said the semi-retired chartered surveyor.

“He ate fat balls by wiping the side of his beak on them. And he could eat bits of bread by sticking his head on one side. I don’t think he would have survived if we hadn’t fed him. He disappeared in the early summer.”

Mr Luscombe’s sighting is the latest in a series of blue tits with deformed beaks spotted by readers. It was started by Maurice Butts, of Aqueduct, Telford, who sent in a picture of a long-beaked tit. Chris Ellis, of Lower Frankton, near Oswestry, and Patricia Bowen, of Oreton, near Cleobury Mortim- er, made similar sightings.

Beaks are made of the sa- me substance as human nails and can grow too fast to be worn down by day-to-day activity. RSPB spokeswo- man Gabrielle Layzell said an extra-long but straight beak was not normally a problem, but birds with long beaks which curved or twisted did not survive long.