Shriek of the Week: Goldcrest
Needly needly, fantasy hitchhiker
Our tiniest bird has an equally tiny scene to remember its song by.
Imagine the dinkiest of bicycles, wheels in need of a good oiling, running down a slope and falling over at the bottom.
If that’s a bit of a stretch, ‘needly needly needly needly’ is a useful approximation for rhythm too.
This has the advantage of alluding to where you’re likely to hear a goldcrest too: anywhere with pine needles.
That might be deep in the Caledonian forest, or among the skirts of an ancient yew tree. But equally it could be in your neighbour’s half-dead leylandii hedge. They’re not fussed.
The pitch of the goldcrest’s song, and its other silvery little vocalisations, means that it can be hard to pick up for some human ears.
Fortunately goldcrests are not shy, often feeding a few feet from the ground, sometimes close to busy paths and roads. With a little patience, or luck, one will jump to the end of a nearby branch at eye level, and hang upside down, hover or generally fidget, unbothered by your presence.
When the angle’s right, you will see the fleck of fiery orange or gold feathers, bordered by dark lines, running along its crown. Occasionally, typically during an argument, these lift to form a crest.
Goldcrests are resident across Britain, and singing already. Now’s a good time to pick them out, before much of the spring chorus has begun.
Fantasy hitchhikers
With such tiny bodies, weighing just a few grams, they can struggle to keep fuelled up in long periods of cold weather. But goldcrests are hardy adventurers.
In the autumn, thousands arrive from the East to winter here, and the unlikelihood that something so small could make it across the North Sea led early observers to some creative theories.
Most famous is the idea that they hitch a ride on the back of woodcocks, which arrive at about the same time.
This is now in the same category as the notion that swallows spend the winter hibernating in ponds, but the lengths we have gone to explain these phenomena does serve to underline just how extraordinary the realities of migration really are.
Goes well with: Firecrest
Next week: Chiffchaff
There’s a Shriek of the Week every Friday. If you know someone who might like a dose of birdsong in their inbox, please pass this along.
Links of the week:
🤖 Are birds real? No, clearly not.
🎶 How does a poet hear birds? On Being interview with Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature
Join Birdsong Academy events this spring:
10-week crash course in birdsong. Learn with others, get expert help via WhatsApp and impress your friends: the next run of Birdsong Essentials begins later this month.
Up With The Birds is a free-to-all ‘virtual dawn chorus’ meeting on Zoom, the next is Saturday 11 March
Half-day Sussex birdsong ‘walkshops’, in Stanmer Park, Brighton and at Herstmonceux Castle (near Hailsham)
Next-level Shriek of the Week: pay £5 a month or £25 a year and help me keep Shrieking - you get narrated posts and exclusive early-morning Zooms in return
Media credits:
Thanks to Fintan O’Brien for his recording of goldcrest song and TheOtherKev on Pixabay for his image of a goldcrest
Firecrest image by Kiril Gruev from Pexels