How I met the goldcrest
Nov 14, 2019
In autumn 2012 I visited the town of Gees in the Netherlands where my work was shown in a beautiful gallery called "Beelden in Gees". I stayed over for a few nights with my family to enjoy the beautiful autumn forests. My parents holiday home was located in the middle of the forest with large windows looking over the garden when suddenly we heard the dull sound of a bird flying against the window. I rushed outside expecting to find a pigeon, but to my amazement on the ground I saw one of the tiniest and cutest birds I had ever seen: a goldcrest.
My father, a bird lover, recognized it immediately and I picked up the motionless bird, hoping that the warmth of my hands would bring it back alive. With it's beak open and it's eyes firmly closed, holding on firmly to a small piece of straw, it looked more dead than alive, so I waited patiently for a spark of life.
My father, a bird lover, recognized it immediately and I picked up the motionless bird, hoping that the warmth of my hands would bring it back alive. With it's beak open and it's eyes firmly closed, holding on firmly to a small piece of straw, it looked more dead than alive, so I waited patiently for a spark of life.
Then as by miracle one eye opened. As it noticed my father, sister, daughter and me staring at it, it's eye immediately closed again. The goldcrest decided to play dead, but we couldn't stop smiling knowing that the little bird was oke. Since it was quite clear it was going to make it, we enjoyed watching this tiny bird from close by; a unique opportunity for bird-lovers like us. After a while it gained consciousness and finally flew away as fast as it could.
Now you might think this is the end of the story, but life had a little surprise for me in store. After this encounter I became quite a big fan of the goldcrest as a bird specie and wrote a blog post about what happened in 2012. I also started to paint this lovely little bird in watercolor, a technique I was again getting familiar with at that time. So as it happens the goldcrest is now part of my collection of first watercolor paintings. I also discovered that there are actually more than one species and they actually look very similar. The golden crowned kinglet, as it's also known in the United States, has been added to my bird collection recently. Below you can see four of my goldcrest paintings.
Still, the story does not end here yet. As it happens, one day my bird watercolors came to the attention of PostNL -the Dutch post office- and they decided to pick one of the goldcrest illustrations as part of their new stamp designs. The theme of their stamps, published in spring 2019, was called 'birds of the garden'. I wanted the goldcrest to be part of the design, but there was some doubt whether the goldcrest was really a frequent visitor of gardens. I had to admit that I had never spotted another goldcrest since 'the window accident of 2012'. But as luck would have it, one day in early spring this year I left my house, opened the door and to my surprise a tiny goldcrest nervously was hopping around from branch to branch in the front garden. When it noticed me it quickly flew away, but because of this wonderful encounter I was now convinced that the goldcrest deserved to be part of the garden bird collection. And that is where the story of the little goldcrest I met in 2012 really ends: as an illustration on a stamp that thousands of people in Holland have been using this year on their letters and packages, just like me...
