Golden-crowned Kinglet

The weather in this part of the country has been, to put it mildly, strange. First it's warm and then it's cold and then it rains and then it freezes and then it snows before deciding to get warm again! March has always been a tough month to live in Minnesota. It makes April seem like a luxury. So to make a long story short, I haven't been out birding beyond staring at the feeders in my backyard. That doesn't mean I don't have a little something to post...

Some of the littlest birds that we see here in Minnesota are the Kinglets. Ruby-crowned are, by far, the more common of the two species around. They'll be here in October on the way south and then we'll see them again in April as they head back north. Once in a while we'll see the guy pictured above - a Golden-crowned Kinglet. We have a spot we check every December during the Christmas Bird Count because it is not unusual to find a few overwintering in the pine groves. An even better day is when we find one or two of these birds in our nets while we're banding.

In the hand we get to see characteristics that might otherwise go unnoticed. To determine the sex of the bird we part the crown feathers and look for orange-red feathers along with the yellow ones. As you can tell, this bird had a nice crown full of both yellow and orange feathers making this a male. Females will only show yellow feathers in their crown.

Seeing this in the field is more difficult, so telling a male from a female at a distance is usually not possible. We should start seeing this species later this month as they head to their breeding grounds up in the spruce forests. Keeps your eyes peeled and your ears open. The next 3 months should be fun!