September 30, 2021. Home. It was just about a year ago that I wrote about a backyard bird, a lingering Tennessee Warbler. Today I had a similar experience with a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
In these mid-fall days, migrating birds sometimes show up in unlikely places, to them it’s just where they happen to be, just a pause along the way. Some days, as I step outside, I’ll catch a fleeting glimpse of a mystery bird making a dash for cover. Occasionally I have some idea what it was, Winter Wrens, for example, are distinctive, they move fast and very low, you could almost mistake them for a mouse. Today’s Ruby-crowned Kinglet was easy to watch and enjoy though.
It spent much of the morning in our backyard which I keep deliberately chaotic and colourful , apparently it makes it a decent place to top up on insect protein. This bird had found our exuberant Gaura lindheimeri plant to be a good source of food and was hovering and picking meals from the flower-heads. I examined the flowers later and found that some had pinhead-size green aphids on them, almost too small to see, unless you’re a kinglet.
This is a little mite of a bird, weighs six grams (almost nothing) and is always on the move making it very difficult to photograph.
