Appearance:

Small and secretive warbler, usually discovered by the contact call. Broad, yellow/whitish wing-bars framed in black, and dark tertials with pale fringes gives the species a contrasting plumage. Long and strong yellow supercilium (lacking the orange base of Pallas' Leaf Warbler). No central crown-stripe. Slightly smaller than a Chiffchaff, with smaller bill and shorter tail. Rump same colour as back (as opposed to Pallas'), and overall greener and more strikingly coloured than Hume's Leaf Warbler (but beware individual variation).

Sound:

Contact call and song both distinct. Contact call a very high-pitched "zeeoooee", with pitch rapidly dropping in the middle, and ending on a quickly rising note. Song an ornamented, drawn out, slow-motion version of the contact call, with similar timbre and pitch.

Contact call:

Distribution:

Xeno-canto: map

Ecology:

Birdlife ecology

Links:

Observation.org Latest observations

Video IBC

Image search Flickr NB! May give other species

Sound search at Xeno-canto

Featherbase

CC

CC-photo:Langham Birder, Licence,Link.

Sounds:Recorded by Jelmer Poelstra,http://www.xeno-canto.org ,CC license

Appearance:

Smallest bird of Western Palearctic. Crown stripe yellow in female, orange in male. Since bird is often viewed from below, the crown stripe is often not visible. The dark eye with the large, pale grey eye-ring is a better character. Pale wingbars and pale tips of tertials. No supercilium. Behaviour essentially tit-like. Restlessly moving among branches in treetops, with frequent hovering to get at insects.

Sound:

Contact call a very high pitched "zit zit zit", only similar to Firecrest and treecreepers. Treecreepers usually calls with longer "zzzziiiiit" repeated at regular intervals, while Goldcrest calls in phrases with two to four calls in series in an uneven rhythm. Firecrest contact calls lower pitched than Goldcrest, and in a softer tone (but quite similar). Song: a very high-pitched, undulating series of arpeggiated notes moving down and up again, repeated 4-5 times ending with a marked "conclusion" (like "trying to start a tiny motor and failing"). Timbre of song similar to contact call.

Song:

Distribution:

Wikipedia: map (se also Xeno-canto below)

Ecology:

Birdlife ecology

Links:

Observation.org Latest observations

Video IBC

Image search Flickr NB! May give other species

Sound search at Xeno-canto

Featherbase

CC