Freaky Beaky

There’s something wonderful about a story that starts off like this:

Freaky Beaky the blue tit owes his life to a diet of bread and dripping.

That sounds like the beginning of a children’s book. :) The story is on the BBC website this morning, “Freaky Beaky’s love of dripping”.

The bird, seen in Hampshire, England, has an abnormally sized beak: 1 inch long, which is gigantic on a four-inch bird. It wasn’t able to eat normally either, having trouble with the usual blue tit fare. A home owner saw this happening and puzzled out what to do.

She tried putting some wholemeal bread fried in beef dripping into the feeder, and was delighted when Freaky Beaky kept coming back for more.

A “bird expert” takes up the story:

Andre Farrar, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: “Blue tits normally have short, powerful, stubby beaks that allow them to pick up insects, seeds and berries but this one clearly has a gross deformity which means he can only eat out of the side of his beak.