Whilst doing some chores in the garden earlier this week I noticed a very confident and typically super active male feeding on the lawn under one of the spruce trees. He seemed to be picking off aphids as can be seen in the crop below.
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Goldcrests do breed in the UK in large numbers but our resident population is swollen by up to 2-3 million birds from the continent (mostly Scandinavia) over the cold winter months.
For the first image below I simply lay on the lawn and got a little cold and wet, within 2 minutes the bird was making regular forays in my direction - thankfully it gave me plenty of opportunities as this species moves so fast that very fast shutter speeds are needed to stop action. The white blur in front of the bird is a remnant patch of snow.
These next two images show the bird in a more typical scene, amongst evergreen leaves.
This species is very endearing and great to be able to watch in the back yard - for those of you that have coniferous trees growing nearby listen out for high pitched individual notes and a very fast moving small bird, they are great to watch, I have noticed a few squabbles recently.
A belated happy New Year to my readers!
