A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet:The Little King Ruby-crowned Kinglet What a delight to hear this tiny bird as it sings its heart out in the spring. It should be arriving right about now, especially in the spruce taiga parts of the LK Delta. And what an energetic bird it is, frenetically moving and feeding through the lower branches of spruce and other shrubs and trees in the northern forest. Notice it flicking its wings almost constantly searching for insects and spiders there and often hovering as it searches. Sometimes it will fly out to catch its insect quarry in midair. And in spring after it first arrives from as far south as the pine forests of western Guatemala, if you are very lucky, you will see it flash its ruby-red crest every time it sings its lovely long bubbling song starting with a lisp and a warble and ending in peter peter peter pete! As soon as they arrive, male Ruby-crowns fly from treetop to treetop, proclaiming their nesting territories to other males that do the same nearby. When the females come in they notice right away that red fire on top of its crown, and when their hormones begin to kick in they take even more notice of the way the male crouches and flutters its wings in a courtship gesture designed to tempt even the most coquettish of females. It doesn’t take long after she makes her choice and selects her nest site 40-90 feet up in a spruce tree that she begins to build one of the oddest of nests in the north. Gathering moss, lichens, strips of bark, twigs, rootlets and gossamer from spider webs, she weaves a deep, hanging globe-shaped nest that she then lines with feathers, plant down and animal fur. She builds this nest near the tree trunk or suspended from a branchlet below a larger horizontal branch that is well protected from above. Inside, the nest measures three inches wide by two inches deep. It has an elastic quality so that it can stretch as the brood grows. To keep it from disintegrating, though, the female has to constantly maintain it. As soon as the nest is complete she lays up to nine creamy-white, brown-splotched eggs, a surprisingly large clutch for such a tiny bird. Incubation is by her alone for about two weeks when all of the eggs hatch at approximately the same time. The male defends the territory and the nest and will sometimes feed his mate on the nest. Both parents feed the naked hatchlings who grow to adult size within 16 days, then fly the coop, and are virtually on their own from then on. These birds are late fall migrants and some years don’t leave till October, depending on the availability of food. Climate change has prolonged the onset of their migration because of warmer weather. I don’t know if the Ruby-crowned kinglet has a Yup’ik name, but its binomial or scientific name is, Regulus calendula, meaning, “glowing little king.” If you watch it flit and flutter about like a king in its kingdom, and the way it flashes its crown when it sings, you’ll understand how it got its name in 1766. It has a few other names, including Ruby-crown, Ruby-crowned warbler, and Ruby-crowned wren. Since it winters in Mexico and Guatemala, it has several Spanish names also: Reyezuelo, Reyezuelo de Rojo, Reyezuelo Monicolorado, and Reyezuelo de Coronilla Colorado. Cool facts: In addition to its hanging globe-shaped nest, which is unique in the north, its clutch of eggs is also unique. Imagine a tiny mite of a bird that only weighs about a third of an ounce, laying up to nine eggs (and up to 12 farther south) in a single nest. And although each egg weighs only about a 50th of an ounce, the entire clutch can weigh as much as the mother bird herself.  |
