A very special visitor!

I was out this morning, filling up all my feeders ready for my Big Cam Birdwatch, when I heard a very distinctive high pitched whistling call in a conifer tree in my garden. I knew straight away what it was….. a goldcrest! I have had them in the garden before, always feeding on this particular tree. I could see it flitting around relentlessly right at the top, so I rushed in to get my camera. With the lens at full stretch at 400mm, I searched for this tiny bird within the pine needles and cones. It wa really difficult as it was so far away and it remained pretty hidden. I struggled to get the focus point locked on the bird and not the branches in front as it rarely came out of the cover of the foliage.

Goldcrests are one of our smallest birds, weighing just 6g, which is about half the weight of a blue tit. The male’s crest is orange in the centre, whilst the females have a yellow crest, so it looks like this one is a female. They eat spiders and insects, mostly searching for food on coniferous trees. This was a great sighting for me, sadly not within my garden birdwatch hour.

I did manage a couple of shot, nothing too amazing and the focus a bit out on some of them…. but good enough for a very positive ID of the beautiful goldcrest… very aptly named!

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