It’s easier to hear the high-pitched, repetitive call of Europe’s smallest bird than it is to see it. However, a successful search is rewarded with a view of a cute little bird with a yellow stripe on the top of its head. The male has a further splash of orange in the middle of its crest, which it raises in courtship display. There are plenty of them on the Chevin, but I recently saw one next to Sainsbury’s, at Myers Croft Beck, so you might get one in your garden. Despite weighing roughly the same as a 5p piece, some of our Goldcrests migrate from northern Europe, and there are reports of Goldcrests covering as much as 500 miles in a day! Understandably, some of them break their journeys on fishing boats or oil rigs in the North Sea. This led to Suffolk fishermen calling them Herring Spink or Tot O’er Seas.
Photos by Pixabay