This morning’s “bird in our yard” seems to be the Golden Crowned Kinglet: at least that’s what our bird ID gadget helped me figure out. I have no pictures of my own- they move too fast, and are too far away for the zoom on my phone- so I grabbed the pictures for this post from eBird.
Tiny acrobats
Dozens of the little guys flickering from tree to grass to tree, making tiny little barely audible ‘chips’ as they go. From most angles they look like boring little grey birds, but every once in a while there is a flash of white or a bit of black. Their purported fancy golden crown is, to my eyes at least, too small to be noticeable.
I noticed that they can even hover for a second or so: a neat trick for a non-hummingbird. They aren’t that much bigger than a hummingbird either: maybe chickadee size.
They flit around, chasing each other and somehow avoiding mid-air collisions as they navigate and sometimes land on dense tree branches. Something about it seems so alive and full of joy that it almost moves me to tears.
Moving on
The flock of little birds have moved on in the time it took me to write this. The dozens are now reduced to perhaps one or two: I’m not sure where they went, or why. Some signal said “better trees/bugs over this way!”, and off they went.
I’m glad I had the chance to watch these tiny birds do their thing for a little while. For a moment I felt a tiny bit better about the world.