Our smallest

Goldcrests are dear to me for many reasons.

1) They are our smallest bird and though maybe they don't have the chutzpah of the wrens, they do have a certain je ne sais quoi.

2) I remember standing by a hedge watching a little group of them work through it, foraging and calling to one another. They were so very close to me - just the twiggy stems of the hedge between us.

3) Their calls are high-pitched and you may lose the ability to hear them with age. I can still hear them with my super-ears.

4) There's a wonderful section in Bernd Heirich's Winter World about the golden-crowned kinglet, a more flamboyant but somewhat similar bird, and I was absolutely mind-blown. In fact, that page I linked to offers this from an interview with Heinrich:

I have since a small boy identified with a tiny northern bird, the kinglet, as a marvel from its extraordinary performance of survival in winter. It is an insect-feeder that may stay all winter in the Maine woods, surviving temperatures down to -30 degrees F, while keeping its body temperature above freezing, likely at least near normal bird body temperature of near 105 degrees F. How does it manage its apparently massive rates of heat production, those required to keep such a tiny body warm? The bird defied the odds, because it is an insectivore. Where do the birds' calories come from since there are not many if any insects about in the north woods in the depths of winter?

I had some ideas but no knowledge of the golden-crowned kinglets' options, but I knew for sure was that it must require something more than just extra-ordinary exercise capacity sustained over very long durations.  It epitomized to me the problem of animals' winter survival, in both the constraints and possibilities in their utmost, as problems that have been solved through evolution in likely diverse ways.....

On finishing writing the book I still didn’t know how kinglets managed to survive in the winter, but had arrived at what I thought would be a likely hypothesis. Being hyper-alert to it and these amazing birds from my writing about them, I later saw them in the act, and captured them in a photograph high in a tree in the middle of the night, that proved it. It was my luckiest ever, and still one of my most prized. [He photographed them huddled together.]

Indeed, thinking about the energy-budget of kinglets encouraged me to seek to disturb birds as little as possible: they are on a fine line between survival and starvation. All that extra flying to flee or hiding and not foraging could tip them into the starving side of the equation.

This is the second time I've seen the bird in my garden. Strangely, he or she seems to come alone. They, like long-tailed tits, are usually found in groups. Heinrich says, well, obviously - you don't want to lose your pals before roosting time in case you can't find the huddle. The bird was remarkably brave - I never get this much time with the wren - and seemed very curious. I hope the bird returns - with friends.