Catching a forest sprite

This past weekend I had the fortune of ringing a new site but one that I had visited many times during my school years. Its called Markland/Holinhill Grips and is two parallel limestone gorges hidden beneath dense foliage. I used to take my friends down there all the time where we'd sit by the stream and generally explore before we all got too old for that kind of thing. Well, almost all of us.

 Sunday morning I found myself doing it all over again. This was my first visit to this site due to being away at university, but one that had been ringed twice previously by the rest of the group. We arrived in the dark and I followed down a dark track through the trees to a clearing where we set up the nets. I had no idea where we were but assumed that once the sun rose I would have some bearing. Turned out that once there was light, I still had no idea where we were, but was pleasantly to find an enchanting mist filled small gorge with a stream running through the middle. Lichens and moss hung from the trees, sparkling with moisture and fungi added splashes of deep red colour to the green background.

Sprinkled around this fantasy forest clearing were bird feeders, as though they had grown from the trees themselves. However here there also lived a monster. A gargantuan seed hopper that held countless kilograms and was padlocked shut to make sure nobody tampered with the beast. It was the work of Dean, a fellow trainee, and is part of three that he made that are in place or soon to be in place at our ringing sites. This Holy Trinity mean that the food lasts much longer and keeps the birds fed and the feeders needing to make less visits. Everyone's a winner.

But it doesn't matter how good your feeding equipment is if you can't put your nets in the right place to catch any birds. We found this relatively quickly as we could see birds visiting the feeders but when it came to doing net rounds we had very little to show for it. A few feeder and net reorganisations gave us a more respectable tally of 25 to finish the morning. Most were Blue and Great Tits, with the odd Chaffinch, Robin and Coal Tit sprinkled in between. We ended the morning with a group of Long Tailed Tits that had some to feast on fat balls but it wasn't any of these that stole the show for me.

With Yew trees all around us we decided to try for Goldcrest and lure out one of these little forest sprites. Their high pitched call drifts through evergreen leaves, making you wonder whether you ever heard anything at all. They encapsulate the forest; secretive, lively and full of charm. Their green colour hides them amongst the leaves whilst their bright crests provide flashes of vivid yellow. It had been a while since I had seen one up close and to my happiness, we were in luck.

They are the UK's joint smallest bird (tied with Firecrest) and this one that we got that morning was only 5 grams. Whats more extraordinary is that these birds will migrate across from Scandinavia for the winter, meaning these dainty little birds will cross seas and all the weather challenges that comes with it. They are remarkable little characters and ringing offers the chance to get up close and marvel. If male, as this one was, then the yellow crest is raised to reveal stunning orange feathers underneath. I think they're fantastic little birds.