From somewhere among them, above me, I hear a high trill that\u2019s almost more like a giggle.<\/p>\n
My binoculars keep landing on coal tit after coal tit, but then, suspended upside down on the branch of a Scots pine, a momentarily clear view gifts me what I\u2019m looking for.<\/p>\n
With a colour palette not dissimilar to a coal tit, and with a black bib and collar, a lovely black crescent framing its face, it\u2019s the little black and white crest that\u2019s the giveaway \u2013 a crested tit, and then another close by.<\/p>\n
These lovely little birds are such a part of these pinewoods, nesting in holes sometimes left by woodpeckers in dead trees, but you can go for weeks without hearing them, and then you do.<\/p>\n
They dart in and out of the pine needles and the thick swathes of lichens that cling to the trees, rooting for insects and pine seeds. When one flies on to a leafless birch branch, with the mid\u2011afternoon low sun momentarily behind it, the silhouette with its crest is unmistakable and so beautiful. A split second later, it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n