Birds of Central Oklahoma

All birds Kinglets

Golden-crowned Kinglet, adult
Adult Photo by kirk gardner. CC BY, via iNaturalist.

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Regulus satrapa

Here November to March.

Recorded by Mike Nelson. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, via xeno-canto, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. A tiny bird with a short tail. It flicks its wings a lot.
  2. Stripes on the face, and no ring around the eye.
  3. A bright patch in the middle of the top of the head. It's orange on males and yellow on females.

A little about it

Golden-crowned Kinglets come here for the winter. Look for them from November to March. In summer, they nest in thick northern forests of spruce and fir. The nest hangs under a branch, high in a tree. On average, it's about 50 feet up.

This tiny bird can live through very cold winters. Thick evergreen trees help shelter it from the cold.

It's always on the move. It hops from branch to branch and often hangs upside down from the tip of a twig. It eats tiny bugs and their eggs, and spiders too. It will even sip sap that oozes out of a tree.

It's hard to see in thick trees, so listen for its high, thin call notes. The song is a few thin notes going up, then a tumbling chatter.

Fun fact

A Golden-crowned Kinglet usually lays 8 or 9 eggs, and sometimes as many as 11. That's a lot for such a tiny bird. The eggs are often stacked in 2 layers in the nest.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in December.

More winter birds

How big

SparrowRobinCrowGoose

3½ to 4 inches. Much smaller than a sparrow. It's one of the tiniest birds around.

Where to look

Pine trees and other trees with needles, like the ones planted in parks and cemeteries. In winter it sometimes uses other trees too.

  • In the woods

People have spotted it at Lake Thunderbird State Park.

Could it be something else?

  • Ruby-crowned Kinglet

    Just as tiny, with the same wing pattern, but it has a bold white ring around each eye. A Golden-crowned has face stripes and no eye ring. The Ruby-crowned also hovers more, and the Golden-crowned hangs upside down more.

Where these facts come from