Ruby-Crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Mixed Forested/Nonforested Landscapes

1st alternative:
      (Spruce/Fir (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Upland Conifer (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Lowland Conifer (Pole or Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Lowland Conifer (Pole or Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
   adjacent to:
      Bog

2nd alternative:
      Treed Bog

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: Ruby-crowned Kinglets select muskegs with black spruce, tamarack, white cedar, and other conifers, a habitat shared with such northern species as the Boreal Chickadee, Gray Jay, Spruce Grouse, and Lincoln's Sparrow, and their frequent associates, mosquitoes and black flies. This kinglet seems to prefer semi-open areas and is rarely found away from coniferous bogs during the breeding season. During migration, and especially in the fall, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet can occur wherever trees and shrubs are found, even old fields.

Ruby-crowned Kinglets will not be threatened in Michigan if the hydrology that sustains bogs, muskegs, and fens of the Upper Peninsula and the Straits of Mackinac area are maintained. Protection of watersheds of these wetlands and the normal flow of water to and from these wetlands should be a priority to maintain these ecosystems.

Habitat: Breeding: Northern coniferous forest in pure or mixed stands of spruce, fir, tamarack or pine, forest edges, open stands, bogs. Wintering: coniferous or deciduous forests understory, open or edge situations, especially in dry oak woodland.

Habitat: Conifers in summer; other trees and brush in winter. Breeds in coniferous forest, including those of spruce, fir, Douglas-fir and some pine woods. Winters in a wide variety of habitats, mainly in open deciduous woods, also in coniferous and mixed woods, mesquite brush, streamside thickets.

Diet: Mostly insects. At all seasons, diet is primarily small insects, the birds concentrating on whatever is most readily available; includes many small beetles, flies, leafhoppers, true bugs, caterpillars. Also eats spiders and pseudoscorpions, eggs of insects and spiders. In winter also some berries and seeds. Sometimes takes oozing sap or visits flowers, possibly for nectar.

Nest: Usually in spruce, sometimes in other conifer; nest averages about 40 feet above ground, can be up to 90 feet, or very low in far northern forest where trees are short. Nest is attached to hanging twigs below a horizontal branch, well protected by foliage above. Female builds deep hanging cup of moss, lichens, bark strips, spider webs, twigs, rootlets, and conifer needles, lined with feathers, plant down, animal hair.