I saw this kinglet on our mountain trip to West Virginia. I found it in the backyard behind the house and heard a strange birdcall. It went like this:
tswee-tswee-tswee wee-wee-wee-whe
I found it by…
I was exploring the forest around the house and saw a bold flash of yellow, black, and red. I came closer. Then I saw it…
A male golden-crowned kinglet sitting on the branch!!!!!!!!!! I did not have photographing equipment, so I rushed inside, grabbed the phone, and ran to the place. Surprisingly, it was still there! I snapped some photos, and put it on iNaturalist. See my observation here.
Golden crowned kinglets are the smallest kinglets in the world, smaller than the ruby crowned kinglet, which I also saw, but did not have time to photograph it. These kinglets have olive-green backs, yellow-black wings, white throats, black tails, and light brown-green chests. To collect food, they hover above vegetation, and wait for insects or spiders to crawl into striking point. They rarely forage on the ground.
The nests of these birds consist of a mass of moss and twigs bound with spiderweb and decomposed leaf. The shape of the nest is medium sized teacup attached to the branches. To attract Kinglets to your feeders, feed them tiny sized seeds and freshly dead insects. To spot a Golden crowned kinglet in the wild, imitate its call. The call is a rapid repeating of very high pitched tsee-tsee-tsee notes. Nest altitude is about 4-100 feet up in a conifer.
The day after, my sister found a fledgling eastern phoebe lying on the forest floor. (Blog post)
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