Floof

I don't claim to know much, but until today I believed I knew that Goldcrests are entirely carnivorous, eating only small spiders, insects, and larvae. However, my new RSPB Handbook says that they "...will sometimes eat small seeds" - and here is one doing just that. I've never seen this behaviour before, but that's not really surprising, given that Goldcrests spend so much of their time hunting for food deep in the canopy of mature trees that even catching sight of one is a bit of an event.

Today I was especially lucky because this female was already out foraging when I arrived at the churchyard, so I immediately began following her with the camera as she rummaged through the yew leaves, and darted back and forth from tree to tree. When she landed on this gravestone, I was so desperate to get the shot that I almost floofed fluffed it by moving the camera too far and fast, and completely losing focus. But she saved me from my own incompetence by finding this "small seed" - left by an earlier donor - and pausing to eat it, which gave me the chance to sort myself out and capture a couple of nice portraits.

By the way, it's the yellow colour of her crest that gives away this little fluffball's sex: in a male it would be orange, or yellow with a central orange stripe.