{"id":948315,"date":"2016-06-03T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=dd30d03a4197b2cc15d1639890a599c5"},"modified":"2019-12-23T01:11:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T12:11:32","slug":"firecracker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/firecracker\/","title":{"rendered":"Firecracker"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a bird and what a way to start my day. Switched my phone on in the morning to see message from James – ‘Firecrest singing in my garden!’, accompanied by a stunning photo. I have seen many Firecrests before, including the one and only (to date) in Israel, but never managed to get a decent photograph.<\/p>\n

Understanding that I might have a chance here, and in UK context it is a scarce bird, I carried my gear with me doing schoolrun, and then headed over to James’s. Was greeted by good coffee and warm hospitality, and very quickly the bird was performing. A stunning male. Jaw-dropping, almost like an flippin’ Blackburnian Warbler.<\/p>\n

He was singing constantly and apparently holding territory between a large spruce and an apple tree, complete with crest-pumping. He was constantly chasing the local Goldcrests and was being chased by them. Will it find a mate and breed here? He was quite a feisty little thing, moving constantly and not so easy to photograph, but eventually ‘we nailed him’ as they say.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Goldcrests are usually personal favourites, but today they were clearly shadowed by the real deal:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Urban birding at its best! I am proud to be the first avian twitcher in James’s garden – he has had moth twitchers before. Thanks to Sharon for this photo. Someone should design a camera with a nose-cavity for large-nosed individuals like myself:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nSubscribe to our FREE Newsletter<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a bird and what a way to start my day. Switched my phone on in the morning to see message from James – ‘Firecrest singing in my garden!’, accompanied by a stunning photo. I have seen many Firecrests before, including the one and only (to date) in Israel, but never managed to get a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":2196530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-7kNbZmARWZM\/V0TNLWFzezI\/AAAAAAAAM_s\/KjSZLWKPULEcdA75atbZd2uds_QULnicgCLcB\/s1600\/firecrest3.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[4991,8327,2152],"class_list":["post-948315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-blackburnian-warbler","tag-firecrest","tag-goldcrest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}