Bird Watching: Golden-Crowned Kinglet

I have become so familiar with the birds that regularly visit our feeders that I quickly notice any bird that looks and/or acts differently. Recently a little bird hopping around on the ends of the branches of the pine tree from which we have several feeders hanging caught my attention. I had to look closely, because the bird was so small. I was able to get a good look at it, though, and determined that it was a golden-crowned kinglet.

The golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa) is a teeny tiny little thing. In fact, it is actually a little smaller than its cousin the ruby-crowned kinglet. [See my article: Bird Watching: Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.] The golden-crowned kinglet is 3½-4 inches. The upperparts are an olive green with the underparts being paler in color. They have white eyebrows with the crown patch being separated from the eyebrows by a thin black line. (The ruby-crowned kinglet does not have such facial markings.) The crown patch on the male is orange to red-orange with a black border, while the female and young birds have yellow crowns. (The one that I spotted was a female.) The wings have two dull-white wing bars. They make high ti-ti-ti or zeet-zeet-zeet sounds, which are often followed by louder staccato notes.

The golden-crowned kinglet breeds in Alaska and in Canada from Manitoba to Newfoundland. In the lower forty-eight of the United States, they breed in southern California, the Southwest, and then eastward to Michigan, Massachusetts, the mountains of North Carolina and East Tennessee, specifically the forests of the southern Blue Ridge Mountain range. They winter in southern California, Arizona, the Gulf Coast, and throughout the southeastern part of the United States except for the tropical regions of Florida.

Once during the breeding season, this little bird will lay 8-9 cream-colored eggs with brown spots in a small nesting cup built between two twigs of a dense conifer. The female incubates the eggs for 14-15 days; however, it is not known how old the fledglings are when they leave the nest.

The golden-crowned kinglet will not visit your feeders for seed. They are strictly insectivorous. In the winter months, which may be the only time that you might have a chance of getting a glimpse of them, they will join mixed flocks of titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers. They will seek out hibernating insects and larvae on the tips of pine trees, which is what the one I spotted was doing. They tend to eat bark beetles, aphids, and scale insects. During the winter, you might also see them feeding on tree sap from the holes drilled by sapsuckers.

If you happen to see some really tiny bird flitting around in one of your conifers, look closely. You might even be able to move quite near it, since the golden-crowned kinglet is not too suspicious of humans. You may actually get to see just how tiny and how cute this little bird is.

References:

Alsop III, Fred J. All About Tennessee Birds. Birmingham, AL: Sweetwater Press, 1997.

Bull, John and John Farrand, Jr. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Edition. NY, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994.