Wildlife watch Keep an eye out for small but perfectly formed Goldcrest - and listen for its call
Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Falls of Clyde Wildlife Reserve Seasonal Ranger Mike Butler talks about one of his favourite little birds.
Other than the treecreeper, which I spoke about on a previous blog, there are other shy birds in our woodlands.
I am talking about the UK’S smallest bird – not the wren (often what people think is the smallest) but the goldcrest, a small greyish-green bird.
Its most recognisable feature, however, is on the top of its head, with it having a gold stripe with a black stripe on either side. This is what gives the goldcrest its name.
Goldcrests tend to live in conifers as their small beaks allow them to pick up insects in between the pine needles.
They especially love spiders, as this makes up a large amount of their diet, and can often be seen hovering in front of spider webs.
Another reason they are hard to see is they like to feed at the tops of trees.
Their call is also really interesting - highly-pitched, which means the older you get the more you may struggle to hear it singing.
The song goes ‘tweedly tweedly tweedly twiddleedidee’ and the call is a ‘zi-zi-zi’.
As their food is found in conifers this also means they nest in the same spot. The nest is usually a small ball shape on the end of a conifer branch, and tends to be made of lichen, moss, cobwebs and hair.
Their eggs take 16 days to hatch and they can have between nine and 11 eggs in each nest, with the male bringing in the food.
Quite unusually for birds, the goldcrest will overlap two broods, where they will actually start the second clutch while the young from the first lot are still in the nest.
This tiny little bird also once had the nickname woodcock pilot, as it is hard to imagine that this bird actually migrates over the North Sea. They once thought that goldcrests must ride on the back of migrating short-eared owls and woodcock.
Goldcrests found to be nesting in Britain, however, never tend to move too far away from their nests. It is, in actual fact, goldcrests from the continent flying through.
I hope this has inspired you to keep a lookout for the smallest bird we have, and if you have any sightings it would be great if you could email fallsofclyde@ scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk!