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cottonmanifesto. Location: Leverett Park.Urban species #351: Golden-crowned kinglet
The golden-crowned kinglet is one of those urban species that you aren't likely to find unless you are looking for it. Most people, even if they were enjoying a walk through a wooded city park, surrounded by tiny birds flitting all about them, might not know what the little birds were. In Boston they would most likely be chickadees or titmice; but there's a chance that they might be kinglets. There are half a dozen species of kinglets, all found in the northern hemisphere, and as a group they are the smallest songbirds on earth. They weigh about 5 and a half grams each. Golden-crowned kinglets move in disorganized groups through dense shrubbery and the branches of conifers, picking spiders and mites, and insect eggs and larvae off of the needles, buds and leaves. They prefer a habitat of mixed spruce and other trees, and construct nests concealed in the thick foliage at the top of fir or spruce. They may be drawn to Christmas tree farms for feeding, but the trees are too small for them to nest in. Their range is expanding in many parts of North America, due to the widespread planting of blue spruce and especially Norway spruce.
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Date: 2006-12-18 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-19 04:46 pm (UTC)I find that after a few minutes of standing still they sort of forget you're there and maybe even approach you a little out of curiously. of course, I still can't get pictures as good as Cottonmanifesto's. There are a couple on my flickr page, here
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=kinglet&w=31716688%40N00
by the way, Cotton, I think I saw you walking around Wards that day!
gribley
http://kittlybenders.blogspot.com
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Date: 2006-12-19 05:12 pm (UTC)http://www.flickr.com/photos/gribley/306986169/
were you the guy standing near the sinkhole looking out at the beach area of the pond? and also watching the red tail fly around?
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Date: 2006-12-19 06:54 pm (UTC)That red tail was fantastic. He flew right over my head at one point -- unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me. Recently I have learned that when a whole bunch of birds all take off and fly away at the same time, if you look where they're flying away from, you'll see a hawk. It only took me a few decades of messing around in the woods to figure that out :-p
no subject
Date: 2006-12-19 06:58 pm (UTC)i saw it fly over your head - you pointed at it. you said hi to me, dude!
More kinglet photos
Date: 2006-12-19 09:09 pm (UTC)You can click on the photo to see the rest of the series.
-Andrew
Hawks
Date: 2006-12-20 10:18 am (UTC)Sat. 20th
2 Pm to Fair Haven Hill & plain below-- Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me--and screaming apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight-- Travelling ever by wider circles What a symbol of the thoughts now soaring now descending--taking larger and larger circles or smaller and smaller-- It flies not directly whither it is bound but advances by circles like a courtier of the skies No such noble progress-- how it comes round as with a wider sweep of thought-- But the majesty is in the imagination of the beholder for the bird is intent on its prey. Circling & ever circling you cannot divine which way it will incline--till perchance it dives down straight as an arrow to its mark. It rises higher above where I stand and I see with beautiful distinctness its wings against the sky-- primaries & secondaries and the rich tracery of the outline of the latter? its inner wings within the outer--like a great moth seen against the sky. A Will-o-'the wind. Following its path as it were through the vortices of the air. the poetry of motion-- not as preferring one place to another but enjoying each as long as possible. Most gracefully so surveys new scenes & revisits the old. As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my thought how bravely he came round over those parts of the wood which he had not surveyed--taking in a new segment.-- annexing new territories
Without heave yo! it trims its sail,-- It goes about without the creaking of a block-- That America Yacht of the air that never makes a tack--though it rounds the globe itself--takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter.-- its sky scrapers all under its control-- Holds up one wing as if to admire--and sweeps off this way then holds up the other & sweeps that. If there are two concentrically circling, it is such a regatta as South hampton waters never witnessed.
Flights of imagination--Coleridgean thoughts. So a man is said to soar in his thought-- Ever to fresh woods & pastures new. Rises as in thought
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If HDT had been able to take a picture of it, would he have bothered to/been able to write this entry? Or if he had been able to post this entry for others to see an hour after he wrote it, what then? ...Ever to fresh woods & pastures new.
Dwight
Re: Hawks
Date: 2006-12-20 06:49 pm (UTC)