Weaving magic

Bunjee jumping from a silken thread (c. J.Fox)

The Goldcrest has got to be one of my favourite birds: not leas because they have so many fascinating facts and figures connected to this pocket rocket package.  They look so good with a smart, sometimes dazzling head pattern and that big black peppercorn eye, suspended in a cool ashy grey face, accentuated by a furrowed, drooping gape line.

I have heard plenty of Goldcrest song in recent weeks, a very thin,hurried verse, recalling an unoiled wheel revolution, repeated 3 or 4 times before fizzling out.
This vocal presence didn't prepare me for the fact that they have taken to visiting the window frames around the house: we run a wildlife establishment here and so you can expect plenty of cob webs and silky thread balls in the crevices around the windows.. there's about twenty separate window frames at ground floor level, so lots of opportunities for extracting silky strands from spiders webs.  These in turn are spirited away for use as a sort of 'fairies duct tape' woven around the Goldcrests nest.  The operation gives me a great chance to see the bird up close and wonder at the fearlessness of this little gem. As Europes smallest bird, it weighs roughly 7 grams, or 4 Goldcrests to the ounce, in old money, roughly about the same weight as a 20 cent coin.

Goldcrest on dock stem in autumn.

Surprisingly perhaps, the delicate nest can house up to 12 eggs, though only pea sized, the clutch still weighs one and a half times the weight of the adult female.

A word of caution: if you find it hard or impossible to discern the song of this little character, it is said that as a standard to test ones hearing, it is one of the first bird songs or sounds lost to old age!

High protein diet (c. Michael Finn)