Firecrest or Goldcrest

hesker

Guys, never posted here before and not that much of a bird watcher. I thought some of you might see some value in this post.

The joys of working from home!

I had 3 little visitors to my patio this afternoon. They only stayed about a minute but they were a beautiful distraction. Sorry, no photos.

Each was small enough to fit in your palm and had a very bright red crown, with black or white on their wing feathers and a gold or green beige underbelly. Sorry, the memory is fading fast now.

I did some Google searches and the first thing I found was ruby-crowned Kinglet but that looks to be native to North America or Canada.

The next thing I found was the Firecrest and Goldcrest. Most of the photos of the Firecrest show a quite dull orange or red crown. But the colour of these was quite vibrant.

Living in middle of Cork city. There are some conifers in a property nearby which may have attracted them or else they just needed a rest. They moved around the patio pecking at presumably small insects.

I waited around for a good half hour but they haven't returned.

These would have been Goldcrests. Firecrests are uncommon visitors in Ireland. Yes, tiny, the smallest European bird. They have to eat constantly in order to survive; they are at about the limit for ratio of mass-to-surface-area that a warm blooded creature can be in temperate climes. They move constantly, live brief hectic lives, and pay little attention to people. We are obviously like lumbering dinosaurs to them.

hesker

Yes, I'm sure you're right. Much, much more likely to be the Goldcrest. After discussing it with my wife we remembered seeing them quite often last year but the crown was yellow in colour.

I found this very nice link on how to tell the two apart.

https://www.bto.org/develop-your-skills/bird-identification/videos/goldcrest-firecrest

hesker

Well I managed to get a couple of photos of one today. Not easy as they move constantly.

Turns out they were Goldfinches. That is if this lad is the same as what I saw previously which I'd say is fairly likely. Very common garden visitor apparently.

fryup

yes fairly common across the country,

firecrest are only found in scotland iirc