Firecrests have played a strong part in the tours we’ve taken this last week.
You can’t fail to be impressed by them. Such a strong sweet song deserves to come from something so richly coloured. Wearing a saddle fashioned from bronze, eyebrows of silver and a crown of gold you would be forgiven if you thought this creature had been fashioned by Faberge. This incredibly tiny member of the Kinglet family is nothing short of a small miracle of design.
The weather was set to improve last Friday afternoon so I took an hour out to go and take a few photographs of Firecrest at my leisure. They can be difficult to photograph when they are high in the canopy so I was looking for a bird feeding at around head height. When I eventually found a foraging bird in low vegetation the break in the clouds had passed over; however it behaved itself, came close, and despite the low light I was able to get a few shots.
It has to be said though no photograph can do a Firecrest justice.