Ruby Crested Kinglet

I've posted a few pictures of the Ruby Crested Kinglet in the Spring. Now the little guy is heading back south, but not before he stopped at Grant Park for some road trip snacks.

In the Spring, we saw the Kinglets in trees. This little one was foraging in the leaves on the ground. Good thing he flits around a lot because he could risk being stepped on.

He is so tiny, he could hide behind a leaf.

He moves faster than the shutter - maybe trying to get a better look at my camera?

I almost deleted this photo - thinking he had flitted away and I missed him - until I saw him, close to the left edge of the photo - looking right into the camera.

Ruby Crested Kinglet

As we're new bird watchers we don't often know what we're seeing right away. It takes a lot of photographing and studying through binoculars to figure out the bird. On the plus side, though, once we've studied it so long we're pretty good at recognizing it again.

This was the case with the Ruby Crested Kinglet. We watched this little bird at the Magic Hedge for at least a half-hour as it flitted (oh these are quite the fast movers) around a little shrub and a small tree. Lots of pictures (many of empty branches as it had flitted away as I snapped the picture) helped us identify it.


Of course, then we started seeing the little Kinglet everywhere. And, we finally got to see it with its ruby crest raised.