Has anyone ever seen a Great Tit with an orange cap on it’s head?

Sorry Jim, I really didn't intend to undermine you - I thought were joking. As you say stranger things have happened so who knows how this Great Tit got its orange forehead.

Hi Tony, I thought you maybe interested in the outcome of me contacting the BTO about this as a result of your suggestion. This was the email reply I got. Mystery solved!
Thanks again for your help :)

Dear Sharon,

Thank you very much for your e-mail and for filling in the Abnormal Plumage Survey about the Great Tit in your garden. Looking at the bird, it seems to have an element of erythrism in it's plumage. This occurs when a chestnut-red pigment replaces certain other pigments in it's feathering. Unfortunately, there isn't anything specific about this phenomena on the BTO website. However, if you search on Google for it, you can find the following information:

www.google.com/search

I hope that helps and we hope that you continue to enjoy watching the birds in your garden.

With best wishes,

David White

Supporter Team

garden.ecology@bto.org

You do indeed. Thank you!

Thanks for the feedback, Sharon. The BTO are pretty good at responding to queries and coming up with an answer. Well done for submitting your photo.
We are quite familiar with leucism (a loss of pigment which produces white patches) in birds but I don't think I've come across erythrism before. Looking at the link it seems it's more prevalent in mammals and insects rather than birds.
Nice to have a mystery solved.

Yes, I read up on their website about leucism. I have actually got a blackbird that comes and it has white patches on it, so I learnt something about that too, as hadn’t heard of it before.

Very interesting all round!

Hello Sharron we have a Great tit visiting our garden as of today 8/ 7/ 2022 witch was a orange cap on its head & it is a colour of its small feathers because it was raining at the time if it was anything else it would have washed off it was coming & going to our bird nuts & i have about eight pictures of it over the last week .