Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Good kings are supposed to be wise, dignified, and austere. Ruby-crowned Kinglets are none of these things, which must be why they’re kinglets. They’re energetic little birds that bounce around in the forest and never stop talking. Their song is a little less than beautiful, but what they lack in musical talent they make up for in loudness and enthusiasm. Male Ruby-crowned Kinglets do indeed have a red crown, which is usually kept hidden. Male kinglets use them as a complement to their song to impress their dates and chase off competitors—why the female kinglets find this attractive, I’m not sure, but apparently they do.

In Vancouver, there is a suite of small brownish birds that can be challenging to identify. Two of the hardest are Ruby-crowned Kinglet versus Hutton’s Vireo—two distantly related birds that decided to copycat each other’s plumages. You know you’re looking at a Hutton’s Vireo when it looks exactly the same as a Ruby-crown, but has a stockier bill and looks like a tourist in Disneyland the way it rubbernecks all the time. Ruby-crowns, in contrast, are like fangirls at a concert, flicking their wings and chatting incessantly. Other helpful clues include the colour of the feet and the dark bar across the base of the secondary feathers (because I’m always looking at the base of the secondaries when observing birds…).

I saw this bird on October 31 at the UBC Botanical Gardens. She never held still for more than a second so most of my photos of her look something like this: