Surprise

The Boy Wonder is coming to stay tomorrow, and because it's recently occurred to me that many of the toys we have here for him aren't age-appropriate any longer, and it's forecast to be a stormy weekend, I went on line this morning and bought a few new things to keep him amused indoors. This required a trip into Stratford at lunchtime to collect them, and I took the opportunity to pop into Holy Trinity for a few minutes of churchyard birding.

The wind was already pretty fierce, and the bigger yew trees were whipping around, so I wasn't surprised not to see any Goldcrests - it seemed likely that they would be staying inside the smaller, clipped yews, which are denser and more stable, and must provide better shelter. There was quite a lot of activity among the bigger birds though, not to mention the Grey Squirrels, all of which were keen to come and take the food I'd put out, and before too long I decided that I had enough shots for one day. Just then it began to rain, and at that point the siren call of coffee became irresistible.

I was sheltering under a big tree, zipping up my coat, when something small and kind of green dropped down from one of the clipped yews onto the nearest gravestone, and because I wasn't expecting to see a Goldcrest I stood staring at it in bemusement for a couple of seconds, trying to decide what it was. To be fair, the bird - a female - was tiny, and although the stone was near to her, it was quite a way from me. When I suddenly realised what I was seeing, I had to scramble to get the camera up and focused before the Goldcrest left again, and I count myself lucky that the R5 was more on the ball than I'd been, and captured her as well as this. I hope she took some seed with her when she darted back into the yew a few seconds later, though I didn't actually see her pick any up - but if not, I'm sure she'll have gone back for some as soon as the churchyard was empty and quiet again.