Bird of the Month: Goldcrest
Sitting by a window one bleak December lunchtime in Notting Hill, I was transfixed by the sudden spark of a goldcrest ( Regulus regulus) – Britain’s smallest bird, on a twig, inches away through the pane.
Its mark of distinction is the yellow stripe of the ‘crest’ emphasised by black bordering. Its weight is that of a sheet of A4 paper.
This event made it easy to empathise with the poem by Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-79), an elder brother of the poet (his surname changed to accord with an inheritance). When my hand closed upon thee, worn and spent With idly dashing on the windowpane… Oh, charm of sweet occasion! – one brief look At thy bright eyes and innocent dismay; Then forth I sent thee on thy homeward quest, My lesson learnt – thy beauty got by heart: And if, at times, my sonnet-muse would rest Short of her topmost skill, her little best, The memory of thy delicate gold crest Shall plead for one last touch, – the crown of Art. From The Gold-crested Wren
The male’s crest is touched with orange and raised in courtship. Its firecrest ( Regulus ignicapilla) cousin’s crest has an additional white colour. The firecrest first bred here in 1962. Wendover Forest, Buckinghamshire, is now its British HQ; the local pub is the Firecrest.
Its 2,000 British population is dwarfed by the goldcrest’s ¾-million, a figure often vastly raised by winter migrants. The goldcrest’s favourite habitat is conifer forest, which explains its growing abundance in Ireland, but it breeds the literal length of Britain, from the Isles of Scilly to the Shetlands.
It is not a wren ( Troglodytes) but a separate species, Regulus or ‘kinglet’.
This name derives from the legend, first written down by Aristotle, that the goldcrest won the title King of Birds by hiding in the feathers of the soaring eagle and fluttering above it at the zenith, with the sun crowning its head.
A goldcrest ringed in Denmark in 1990 was caught the next day in Yorkshire – so crossing the North Sea is no obstacle. Boats are a refuge in storms; hence its fisherfolk name, ‘herring nip’.
Like woodcock, goldcrests arrive in ‘falls’ or flocks (15,000 on the Isle of May in October 1982) – frequently at the time of the November full or ‘woodcock’ moon, earning them the name ‘woodcock pilot’.
The goldcrest’s usual call is a highpitched sisi, often too thin to hear. The combination of call, size and usual preference for conifer gloom makes them hard to locate or see. They are monogamous but in winter forage in numbers, often with other birds. This is the likeliest time to glimpse them, especially in gardens. Losses in hard winters are restored by milder ones and clutches of up to a dozen eggs twice a season. A garden or graveyard yew is often a nesting site, the moss cup hung by cobwebs from the tip of a branch.