I had a little time to spare today, so I placed a folding seat less than two metres away from the bird feeders at the front of the house, threw some camo scrim over my head and shoulders and waited to see what would show up (apart from the police that is)!I did this because I’ve been disappointed with the results of my hurried efforts to photograph the Long-Tailed Tits and the Goldcrest this week. The former are frequent visitors to the feeders while the latter is very a rare guest and only feels forced to use the feeders this time around because of the atrocious weather we’ve been having over the past few days.Both species are extremely quick-moving little busy-bodies as they dart about all over the place, (almost bordering on the frantic) and this makes them very difficult to photograph at the best of times!Well, I suppose I did a little better this time around (after all, they were barely more than a metre away from me), but I’m still not entirely happy!

Together with it’s scarcer cousin, the Firecrest, the Goldcrest is the UK’s smallest species of bird. Barely three inches from the tip of it’s beak to the tip of it’s tail, it can usually be heard or sometimes seen in the tops of the tallest trees in coniferous or mixed woodlands.They occasionally visit the fir trees in my back garden, but it takes extreme weather like that we’ve been having over the past few days to make them use the feeders.They are also very quick and agile and I had to be equally quick to get this shot with just my Ricoh pointy-shooty camera! There’s another shot of this tiny bird on the “Garden” page.