Birds from the Canary Islands are particularly distinctive having a black forehead, pink-buff underparts and a darker closed wing, and have been sometimes treated either as a subspecies of the common firecrest or as a different "Regulus" species altogether. They were sometimes called the Tenerife goldcrest, no matter which of the islands they lived on; however, a 2006 study of the vocalisations of these birds indicate that they actually comprise two subspecies of the goldcrest that are separable on voice; "R. r. teneriffae" occurring on Tenerife and the newly described subspecies, "R. r. ellenthalerae", the western Canary Islands goldcrest, occurring on the smaller islands of La Palma and El Hierro.