44.  FIRE-CRESTED WREN. Regulus ignicapillus, C.L.  Brehm.  French, “Roitelet a triple bandeau.”—­I have a pair of these killed in Guernsey about 1872, but I have not the exact date; and Mr. Couch, who knew the Fire-crested Wren well, writing to me on the 23rd of March, 1877, says:—­“I had the head and part of a Fire-crest female brought me by a young lady.  She told me her brother knocked down two, and the other had a beautiful red and gold crest; so it must have been the male.”  As Mr. Couch knew both the Goldcrest and Fire-crest well, and the distinction between them, I have no doubt he rightly identified the bird which was brought to him.  These and the pair in my collection are the only Guernsey specimens I can be certain of.

The ‘Star’ newspaper, however, in the note above quoted as to the migratory flock of Golden-crests, says:—­“It may be a fact hitherto unknown to many of our readers that the Fire-crested Wren, very similar in appearance to the Golden-crested Wren, is not very uncommon in our Island.  The Fire-crested Wren so closely resembles its confrere, the Golden-crested Wren, that only a practised eye can distinguish the difference between them.”  I do not quite agree with the ‘Star’ as to the Fire-crest not being “very uncommon,” though it occasionally occurs.  I do not think it can be considered as anything but a rare occasional straggler.  And this from its geographical distribution, which is rather limited, is what one would expect; it is not very common on the nearest coast of France or England, though it occasionally occurs about Torbay, which is not very far distant.

The name Fire-crest has probably led to many mistakes between this bird and the Golden-crest, as a brightly-coloured male Gold-crest has the golden part of the crest quite as bright and as deeply coloured as the Fire-crest; and the female Fire-crest has a crest not a bit more deeply coloured than the female Gold-crest.  In point of fact the colour of the crest is of no value whatever in distinguishing between the birds, and the “practised eye” would find itself puzzled if it only relied upon that.

The French name for the Fire-crest, however, “Roitelet a triple bandeau,” is much more descriptive, as under the golden part of the crest there is a streak of black, and under that again a streak of white over the eye, and a streak of black through the eye; there is also a streak, or rather perhaps a spot of white, under the eye.  The Gold-crest has only the streak of black immediately under the gold crest; below that the whole of the side of the face and the space immediately surrounding the eye is a uniform dull olive-green.  If this distinction is once known and attended to the difference between the two birds may be immediately detected by even the unpractised eye.

A very interesting account of the nesting of this bird is given by Mr. Dresser, in his ‘Birds of Europe,’ he having made a journey to Altenkirchen, where the Fire-crest is numerous, on purpose to watch it in the breeding-season.  The nest he describes as very like that of the Golden-crest; the eggs also are much like those of that bird, though a little redder in colour.