Today being Valentine’s Day, I thought it appropriate to do a photo essay on a cute little bird that I have a soft spot in my heart for – the diminutive Golden-crowned Kinglet. I find it amazing that this bird can survive the harsh Canadian winters and am always heartened when I see them flitting about on a cold winter’s day, most often in the company of chickadees.
Photographically, they are certainly a challenge – always moving about at a rapid pace, and often deep within the branches of trees. So almost always I will have to use a high shutter speed to avoid motion blur, and a correspondingly high ISO. However their saving grace (for the photographer at least) is the fact that they seem to be unperturbed by humans and are quite happy for me to snap away at close range as I strive (usually with limited success!) to get a decent shot.
The little Kinglet is quite photogenic and often strikes a ‘fluff-ball’ appearance…
That said, the juvenile Kinglet is not quite so cute and in fact looks like a real scruffy character like this one which was one of a flock of 20+ such juveniles…
My hope this year is to try & capture images of a male kinglet displaying its crown like a mohawk…I’ve never seen one do it yet, so to photograph will be a real treat. Here’s hoping!
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Thanks! I hadn’t seen a juvenile up until that point, and there was a great bunch of these youngsters and I couldn’t find a single adult amongst them!
Wow. Amazing shots, fully crushed. Thanks for putting up a juvenile, I’ve never seen one before.
Happy Valentine’s Day, really lovely photos, Tim! The juvenile looks cute in a scruffy kind of way.