Entertaining Royalty-Golden Crowned Kinglets

The week before we left for this trip to MD and TN I had the distinct pleasure and honor of having royal guests in my trees- Golden Crowned Kinglets had arrived from the north. Actually they had been on the Cape since the fall, but it seems they don’t swing by my yard until later in November, so it is has always felt like another “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat” sort of marker for me.

And was there ever a cuter bird wrapped in royal clothing? Second smallest one out there after the Hummingbird and they come in two species, Golden Crowned and Ruby Crowned. Both adorable, Ruby’s being more rare than Goldens where I live. But don’t let that Disney-like cuteness fool you. This is one tough bird you’re looking at it. Able to withstand sub-zero temperatures and to eek out a living in the Maine winter woods as easily as here on the slightly balmier Cape.

If you want to know in GREAT detail how they do this, I recommend Bernd Heinrich’s book titled, “Winter World”. A professor of Biology at the University of Vermont who spends at least half his time in the Maine woods, he also marvels at how a bird of this minute size can maintain an internal temperature that would cause us to die of heat stroke, constant in sub-zero weather! Their internal temperature is even higher than most other birds.

So what’s their secret? Mostly, its simply becoming little puff balls in the cold. It’s a testament to how insulating their downy feathers are. When fully fluffed out, the kinglet can manage about 1” of air space that amazingly holds in the heat. It also doesn’t loose heat to its feet as we do, for like many birds it has mechanisms to keep its legs and feet just above the freezing mark. Tucking its head and feet up close to its body when it sleeps all combine to keep it warm on the inside when it is cold on the out.

Heinrich was so intrigued by the kinglet's ability to maintain an internal temperature that was, at times up to 78C. different from the air around it, that he came up with all kinds of experiments, using dearly departed kinglets as his subjects. He would pluck them and then measure their rate of cooling. A naked kinglet (something I don’t even want to picture) would cool at a rate 250% faster than a feathered one. Actually, you and I might have been able to figure that one out and we aren’t even trained biologists, but still, some of his calculations are impressive. I quote, “ Thus at an air temperature of –34C a kinglet that maintains a steady 78C difference between air and body temperature at its normal temperature of 44C would have a passive cooling rate of 78 x 0.037 C/min.=2.89 C/minute.” Got that? That my friends, is the difference between a real scientist and someone just playing around the edges of Naturalist as I am!

Well, I am not suggesting you go out to find and pluck your own kinglet for further testing, but I would encourage you to keep an eye and ear peeled for them. They are another of what I would call “hearing test” birds for their call is fairly high. It sounds a lot like our Black Capped Chickadee only the “tsii, tsii, tsii” sound it makes is slightly higher than the chickadee’s and comes in three’s. When I hear it repeatedly doing three calls I start checking and usually, there they are. They also flit about more than a chickadee. I like this description from a National Geographic site. “A tiny, thin billed, wing flicking insectivore”. That captures it pretty well.

Although they spend their summers in the Canadian arboreal forests, they do come to the States for the winter, with some staying year round in the Northern states like Maine. So there is a good chance, if you are out and about and listening you might just happen upon this small bit of royalty. If you do, marvel at its ability to survive but erase from you mind any picture of naked kinglets cooling!