John James Audubon’s first encounter with a ruby-crowned kinglet didn’t work out well for the tiny bird. Attracted by its loud song, Audubon’s son shot it so that his father could draw it.
Deb Hagerty saw her first ruby-crowned kinglet in a patch of wild roses on Jan. 10 while birding with her husband Ray on a bluff at Libby Beach, north of Fort Ebey on Whidbey Island.
The Robe Valley resident didn’t shoot it.
“At first I thought it was a sparrow with a bright rose hip for lunch but there was something wrong with that picture. The movement was wrong.”
Second choice: mountain chickadees?
“But they were jumping up and down in the air like jumping beans rather than flitting from branch to branch and that was the wrong movement (for) chickadees.”
It turned out to be a ruby-crowned kinglet male with a red crown patch.
“It was such a nice surprise.”
Birding has become the outing of choice now that she can’t hike anymore and her husband rarely hunts.
“He can still take his absolute love of being out and finding animals … and we don’t have to bring something home other than pictures and lists and drawings and empty coffee cups,” she said.
About eight years ago, the Hagertys bought their first bird book. Ducks became mallards and widgeons and hooded mergansers; French-fry birds became chickadees and juncos.
And a bird with a rosehip became a ruby-crowned kinglet, offering a good example of a bird’s physical characteristics and foraging niches going hand in hand.
Smaller than the smallest Pacific Northwest warbler, it weighs about a quarter-ounce. That lightness of being allows it to cruise the tips of small branches, usually conifers. Kinglets have been called butterfly birds because of the fluttering motion of their wings (up to one beat a second) that allows them to look for insects.
The small pointed beak is a clue to diet. Birds with that kind of beak hunt for insects; again, a physical characteristic linked to a niche. Kinglets also search bark crevasses for tiny insects sometimes ignored or overlooked by bigger birds.
The ruby-crowned kinglet is found year-round in Western Washington.
Kinglets dress on the drab side, with olive-greenish upper parts and light grayish-yellow under parts. They have broken white eye rings and two white wing bars on dark wings.
The males have a small bright red crown patch that’s displayed for short periods when courting, singing and being aggressive.
Kinglets practice serial monogamy, with new pairs forming each year. Their nest, usually in evergreens, is a cup made of moss, cobwebs, lichen, twigs and needles, lined with soft bark strips, hair and feathers.
There’s a skinny opening, and sometimes all you can see is the tip of the female kinglet’s tail, but you’ll have to look up to find it; that’s way up, usually 40 feet or higher. The nests can be found lower, but kinglets don’t read bird books so they don’t always follow our generalities. In the spring, the female incubates seven to 10 eggs, the largest clutch relative to its size for North American songbirds.
The male brings the female food until the eggs have hatched. Chicks leave the nest in about two weeks. The female may leave, but the male might continue to feed the young for another week.
The male ruby-crowned kinglet’s long song of whistles, short notes and warbling phrases is much louder than expected from a tiny bird. When you hear it, first look high in the branches where it’s likely to be exercising its territorial imperative.
The Hagertys have what’s needed to study these birds high overhead.
“For my anniversary, the best necklace I ever got was a big pair of binoculars. Last year I surprised my husband with a scope and he surprised me with one, too!”
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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