There are a couple of reasons to love autumn. I have already blogged about the arrival of the various thrushes into our island. This has been gathering momentum in the past week or so with regular sightings of Redwings and Fieldfare at my local patch of Forest Farm. I have also heard that the Starling flocks are slowly building down at Newport Wetlands, and hopefully we will have a huge numbers like last year and some spectacular aerial displays in the near future.
There are other birds that make incredible journeys to get to our shores at this time of year, journeys made even more epic by their diminutive size. The king of these minnows surely must be the Goldcrest. Along with it closely related cousin, the Firecrest, the Goldcrest is Britain’s smallest breeding bird. It weighs in at just around five grams, about a teaspoon full of sugar in old money, and is less than four inches in size. The UK population is swollen by some three to five million wintering birds from Scandinavia. Early ornithologists did not believe a bird this small could possibly survive the rigors of migration alone, and therefore must have hitched a ride on other much larger birds, indeed an old English name for the Goldcrest is the “Woodcock Pilot”, as the influx of both birds coincided. It also earned the name of “Herring Spink” by Suffolk fisherman, who regularly reported flocks of exhausted Goldcrests taking a rest on their fishing boats or their net floats in the North Sea. Much the same is still reported on the oil rigs in the region today, with all manner of migratory birds having a well-deserved breather turning up! These have started to become important parts of the migratory story now, and once again prove nature’s wonderful ability to adapt to the changes we tend to force upon it.
The less common Firecrest curiously gave me my first two encounters with the phenomenon of twitching long before I picked up a pair of binoculars, or shook a bucket for the RSPB. I was aware, from watching various Bill Oddie programmes on the television at the time, of the curious habit of people running around the countryside or housing estates looking for what are (usually) small brown birds that are just trying to get on with their own lives so you could put a tick in a book. One day, several house moves ago now, I was out having a walk and some fresh air when I encountered a large group of people dressed conspicuously in camouflage gear armed with telescopes and binoculars wandering the tarmacked streets of Miskin. Having reassured myself an invasion hadn’t started, and these “cammo’ed up” people weren’t an advanced party of scouts; I enquired what they were up to. They were trying to spot a Firecrest that had been seen on the estate. Being a curious sort, I promptly looked up “Firecrest” on the internet when I got home. I know the next bit may be hard to believe, but I assure you it is true. Within an hour of finding out what one looked like I was distracted by movement on the street light directly outside the second floor window by which I was working. There, in all its diminutive glory was the said Firecrest, sat for the entire world to see on top of the sodium lamp! There was not a twitcher in sight! Round one of that days particular birding hide and seek went to the Firecrest. I must be a bit of a Firecrest magnet, as almost the same scenario played out at Cosmeston Lakes a couple of years ago, by this time I had become interesting in bird watching, and bird photography, and I knew what to look for!
These two tiny birds as I said are royalty amongst our autumn visitors. Even their Latin names reflect that, being part of the Regulus species or “kinglet” group of birds, named after their golden crowns or crests. Who knows, that chance sighting back on that late autumn morning in Miskin, may have planted the seed that brought me to the present day and writing these blogs.
In part two of this blog I will look at our other small winter passerines that may be gracing your bird table in the coming months.
PS. I have to confess, I am no longer pure either, having twitched the Great White Egret at Newport Wetlands, and the Long Billed Dowitcher at Slimbridge this year!
© Image – Anthony Walton