365 Urban species. #351: Golden-crowned Kinglet

[urbpan]

Photos by 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.

Comments

[droserary.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask, how does cottonmanifesto get photos like that? Every time I've tried to take digital photos of birds in shrubs or trees, even with the zoom lens and high dpi and photo size, they fly away before I can snap the photo. She must be incredibly stealthy, talented, lucky, or all three.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

They are so tiny. I wonder if I've ever seen one. There was a birdbook I had that had a section on microbirds. Is this one of those?

[(Anonymous)]

These kinglets are my new favorites. They are so tiny as to be practically invisible, but once you find them they are gorgeous. and as Cotton says, they are total spazzes. They're wonderful.

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

More kinglet photos

[treeclimber47.livejournal.com]

Your GC Kinglet entry inspired me to dig up my best round of kinglet photography, this was in untypical habitat, a rose garden in the Fall. Even when they are hopping around right in front of your face they're still very difficult to capture with camera. Which is fine by me, it's nice to have things in nature slightly beyond reach:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturejournal/326473961/)

You can click on the photo to see the rest of the series.
-Andrew

Hawks

[(Anonymous)]

OK, I know it is a kinglet thread, but I wasn't the one who brought up hawks. HDT has this entry for Dec 20 in 1851:

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