This tiny bird is one of my favourites at national Trust properties. When you are walking near trees you are probably never too far from a goldcrest. They often favour the yew trees. You may be alerted to them by their call, but this is quite quiet and very high-pitched, so you need good hearing.

To see them you have to pick a relatively calm day, stand still and look up into the tree for movement. They can usually be seen hopping around the branches looking for food, often hanging upside down. They move quite quickly, rarely staying in the same place for more than a few seconds. if you stay still, they will often ignore you and carry on looking for food until they decide to move to an adjacent tree.

The Goldcrest is our smallest bird. People may think the Blue Tit is a small bird, but in the photo below you can see the Goldcrest is indeed smaller. It's very unusual to see Goldcrests on a feeder, or even ground feeding as this one is. However, they normally eat insects, and these are not so available in the winter months (this was December), and feeders give a plentiful supply of food for them.

They are easily identified by their vivid yellow crest, which can sometimes be almost orange/red (as shown below). Not to be confused with the firecrest, which has more of a stripe around the eyes rather than the goldcrest's circle. A Firecrest is a much more difficult bird to see.