Oakland Township is honored to have royalty stop by on their way to the north country! No entourage for this group, though the paparazzi do follow them avidly, as you’ll see below. Like many royals nowadays, they mostly look ordinary. But once in a while, if you’re lucky, each of them don their extravagant gold and ruby crowns – especially when courting their royal consorts or battling over territory.

A blog by Cam Mannino

As you may have guessed, I’m referring to two kinglets, those tiny avian migrators who, when excited, raise their brightly colored crests. In the last two weeks, both little “crowned heads” of North America paused in their northern sojourn to enjoy a brief  respite among the trees of Charles Ilsley Park.

Most of the time, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula) is an unassuming green-gray bird with a white eye-ring.  It hops at a frenetic pace from limb to limb, tree to tree, twitching its wings, and moving on.  Here’s a Ruby-crowned Kinglet in its humble garb at Ilsley last week.

The more common appearance of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet

But when agitated, this diminutive monarch pops up a bright scarlet crest. Unfortunately all of the Ruby-crowns I’ve seen have been reluctant to display their crowns for me. So, here’s a photo of one doing just that, taken by Mathesant, a talented photographer at inaturalist.org.

When excited or annoyed, the male pops up a scarlet crown. Photo by Malesant CC (BY-NC)

On a cold April morning, the birders spotted another royal migrator, the Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa). Since this one preferred to stay high in the treetops, taking his portrait at Ilsley on a gray day was a bit challenging – but at least  we were able to admire that bright yellow head stripe from a distance.

Golden-crowned Kinglet hides his orange crest under a yellow stripe

These little birds (smaller than a chickadee!) keep a patch of orange/red feathers hidden beneath that stripe. This tiny kinglet also only flaunts his splendid crown when he’s really excited. I couldn’t find a photo of the raised crest that I could share here. But it’s pretty impressive, so catch a glimpse at this Cornell link  instead.

These two aerial royals only grace our parks on their way to the dense spruce or fir forests to the north, the summer retreats where they raise their offspring. So be on the lookout right now for royalty in the tree tops!