Firstly, I must apologise, I'm not a crack shot like some people here.
But this is my story - we have a number of birds in our garden, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Dunnocks etc and what we thought were Coal Tits for the last couple of years.Recently I was thumbing through a garden bird book I got for Christmas and realised our Coal Tits didn't match what was in the book, namely because of the big black stripe down their chests.A bit of research suggests they might be Cinereous Tits, but I can't find reports of them in the UK elsewhere.I did find other people posting pictures in these forums asking the same question, but were universally told they were juvenile Great Tits.These are not juvenile birds. They're a pair and have been around our garden for a couple of years. There's no yellow around the mouths and their plumage has remained grey year round.
They don't have anything to do with the Great Tits they frequent our garden and prefer the company of a pair of Blue Tits.
I open the floor to all suggestions!
Great tits IMO, their colourings can vary sightly, some are more vibrant than others
(Pardon the Scottish Accent)
Yes, they look nothing like the other Great Tits in our garden which are green and yellow. These two are positively grey and possibly a little sandy coloured underneath.
I agree here, they look like young birds to me
I really can't stress enough that they've been in the garden for two years. I'm open to them being Great Tits, but I promise they are not juveniles.
Certainly great tits as you can make out greenish backs.
They're really grey in real life. I wonder if I had the camera settings wrong, maybe they do have that tinge. The shot where it's sitting on the frog is a good example of how subtle that tinge actually is. We really have spent the last two years thinking they were Coal Tits.
Photos can make appearance greyer for sure. But can photos make appearance greener? Not convinced. As you rightly said prev., they don’t match coal tits.
I work in TV, yeah they absolutely can. I think the solution here is to wait till the trees have leaves again and take more photos, because that will make for a better comparison.This a Blue Tit I shot on the same day, at the same time, with the same camera settings. You can see it has much brighter plumage.
They are Great Tits. They do vary in the brightness of plumage depending on both age and sex.
Interesting. The colour on the blue tit is a bit washed out too, so I think it whatever you're suing to take the photos is part of the issue. However, there is clearly greenish tinge on all the photos, not just a rogue one.
I can't see leg rings, so they could be different individuals to ones you saw two years ago.