Bird of the week - Firecrest

Here is a bird I have never seen before and it's a real beauty.  If I were a twitcher (U.S. chaser) it would be a tick on my list.  This firecrest has been in North Shields for at least a couple of weeks so I decided to go to see it.  It is very small, is very fast moving and was in a dark corner of a municipal shrubbery so the photos aren't great quality but I think they are worth seeing.

The firecrest is similar in size and shape to a goldcrest but is much rarer and more striking in appearance.  Most obviously it has bold black and white facial markings but there are other subtle differences which explain the differences in prey and hunting techniques between the two birds which can live side by side without direct competition. I think this one is a female as the male has a red stripe down the middle of the orange.

In the early years of the last century the firecrest was an irregular visitor to the south of England and it wasn't recorded as a breeding bird until the 1960s (in Hampshire).  Firecrests are now scarce resident breeders in the south of England but are only rare winter visitors up here.  The Northumberland & Tyneside Bird Club Atlas collected data for 2007-2011 and on average recorded one or two firecrests each winter so I feel privileged to have seen this one.  Our birds probably come from central Europe.  It is amazing that this 5g bird flies right across the North Sea to get here.

The firecrest is Regulus ignicapilla, meaning fire-haired kinglet.  It didn't feature in Thomas Bewick's A History of British Birds (1797) because it was then unknown in England.  It was painted by Archibald Thorburn nearly 100 years ago, along with a goldcrest (top left), a nuthatch, a wren, a dunnock, an Alpine accentor (I think) and a dipper.

You can watch a BTO video on identification of firecrest and goldcrest here.  And listen to Chris Watson's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day here.