Hi I wonder if someone can help. We have a couple of bird boxes and normally a pair of Blue Tits take residence but this year I noticed the larger Great Tit using it, I think the male is a normally marked Great Tit but the female which spends more time in the nest has similar markings on the body but instead of yellow chest it is grey almost like a Coal Tit but as big at the Great Tit. Is this just a normal colour of females or something like a hybrid? Sadly no pictures yet but will keep trying to get some
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Great Tit and Blue Tit ? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter TM1966
- Start date
Alexander Stöhr
Well-known member
Hello,
welcome to Birdforum!
Great Tits with reduced or (nearly) absent yellow tones are quite regular, having a pale cream or rarer greyish belly then. But Great Tits totally lacking yellow hues like your bird are rare.
Here is one with reduced yellow (Ziesar, NE-Germany, 30.11.2022)
I read somewhere that this at least partly diet, hormon or even temperaure related (? *)
And the fittest bird show their state by bright yellow hues on the belly.
(And this came into my mind too: another possibilty is fluffed up plumage, with underlying greyish/whitish plumes become visible. Well worth considering in a breeding female?)
* I hope for more comments about this with my request for Yellowhammers in another thread here on BF.Thanks!
welcome to Birdforum!
Great Tits with reduced or (nearly) absent yellow tones are quite regular, having a pale cream or rarer greyish belly then. But Great Tits totally lacking yellow hues like your bird are rare.
Here is one with reduced yellow (Ziesar, NE-Germany, 30.11.2022)
I read somewhere that this at least partly diet, hormon or even temperaure related (? *)
And the fittest bird show their state by bright yellow hues on the belly.
(And this came into my mind too: another possibilty is fluffed up plumage, with underlying greyish/whitish plumes become visible. Well worth considering in a breeding female?)
* I hope for more comments about this with my request for Yellowhammers in another thread here on BF.Thanks!
Earnest lad
Well-known member
In addition the vertical black line down the chest is thinner in the female than it is in the male
Without seeing the bird it's impossible to say anything, but note:
- It's presumably a colour aberration.
- Normal females are closely similar to normal males except for the thinner black line down the underparts as mentioned above. I would guess that the aberration in your bird is unrelated to sex.
- Some east-Eurasian forms in the great tit complex have reduced yellow (I'm not suggesting your bird might be one).
Thank you all for your replies, I sat at a distance for a while yesterday and observed the comings and goings at the nest box. The male is easy to identify being a good colour of yellow and the broad black stripe down its chest, he was in and out of the nest constantly. The female showed up after a while and I could see the thinner black line on her chest but I am pretty sure now she is just a normal Great Tit with a very faded yellow colour on her chest, hard to see but confident I could see a "tinge" of yellow, she spent more time in the nest box than out of it and I guess the faded colour maybe due to the breeding of the young etc, but I did get some images off my phone but to be honest they were poor quality, I will try with my camera today and post them later if possible to hopefully confirm what I saw
