An Amazing Avian Artiste!

Writing this post to record a remarkable encounter with one of Britain's smallest birds - a male Goldcrest - in our garden last week (Sun 11th Oct 2020). They are occasional visitors to our neighbourhood usually staying only for a few minutes. This one though I was able to watch for a good 30 minutes, searching the tree canopy at the end of the garden (focussing on the acers and hornbeams) between a couple of bouts of sitting on a branch about 5 metres up preening thoroughly for a good 5 minutes each time, with me watching from directly below, getting a cricked neck in the process.

What was most remarkable though was its singing.

I didn't at first believe it could be the Goldcrest that was making the sound, as the song was so different from the familiar "seedli seedli seedli seeee see see" calls I'm more used to hearing. But it seemed to be the only bird around, and the sound followed the bird's movements. The singing also ceased during the aforementioned preening sessions.

Unfortunately it was very windy despite being a bright and sunny (though chilly afternoon) and I didn't manage to record any of it.

But anyway, the song itself was more like that of a Robin singing to itself*, only higher pitched, squeakier and less tuneful, but littered with snippets of mimicry of other species. A keen ear could detect, along the expected "seedli" sounds, snippets of coal tit, blue tit, goldfinch, possibly chaffinch, and distinctly the trill calls of a long-tailed tit. Furthermore it was singing all the time it was fluttering from branch to branch, in bursts of maybe a minute or more.

As outlined above, I would never have attributed such varied singing to a Goldcrest unless I'd watched it myself. The quality was more like that of a warbler - to which they are reasonably closely related - a family that features plenty of expert mimics. None of my bird books mention anything about mimicry by Goldcrests though, and I've not found any such reports on the internet either. Maybe it was auditory pareidolia on my part? I don't know now, but it was a memorable experience either way.

*Something I've observed Robins doing (at least outside the breeding season) is to find a nice quiet perch and sing quietly with their beak closed so as to mute the sound, as if they're almost humming tunes to themselves that they're rehearsing. Quite delightful.