It’s a Goldcrest. If you look at the top of its head, the yellow stripe identifies it. A rare sighting- very small, very shy, low numbers. At first glimpse, I thought it was the even rarer Firecrest, but the necessary red stripe in the yellow remained obstinately missing. So, a Goldcrest it is.
This tiny visitor came during the cold days of the 2018 winter. Attracted by the fat & seeds in the shell, it enjoyed a good lunch before disappearing.
The photo has taken a while to appear: it was taken through a window, using a looooong telephoto lens, and it required some special processing to make the quality acceptable. This pic won’t win prizes, but ANY photo of such a rare visitor will be treasured.
Rarity increases the value we place on things. The excitement of birders at Pagham Reserve and Arundel Wetlands knows no limits when a rare bird turns up! Such a pretty little thing… I have to admit I was pretty chuffed to see a Goldcrest.
So- does the technically “poor” quality of the photo take away from the moment?
Well, if I was a professional aiming to publish glossy, classy pics, this one would be in the “reject” pile. But I’m only an enthusiastic observer of Nature who delights in sharing the life of beautiful creatures, so I’m prepared to smile happily, keep the photo unrejected-and hope that maybe one day I will take an even better photo.
Imagine how burdensome life would be if everything imperfect was chucked away. I’d be thrown out, for starters. Perfect people are really, really, rare. In fact there is only one- Jesus. Even his enemies acknowledged his sinlessness. His executioner cried out “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27 v54)
There’s another wonderful thing about Jesus. Through His death and Resurrection Jesus made it possible for us to be reconciled to God.
"So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ."
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
The Reflectionary 