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By Root 1275 0

she laid off the points for the approximate circle for the top of the nest. Then she spanned the space through the center of the circle, roughly speaking from north to south, with spider’s silk and moss, forming a sort of cable, which later assumed the appearance of a hammock. After a time, when the bird came with moss or silk, she would fly down upon the hammock as if to test its strength and lengthen it. At all times, however, she worked all over the nest from left to right, moving her beak back and forth as she secured the silk and moss and stretched the web from one point of attachment to another. As soon as the hammock would support the bird, she stood in the center and walked around from left to right. When the hammock was wide enough to admit of her sitting down, she modeled the center of the suspended band by burrowing against it with her breast, and making a kicking motion with her feet. Gradually she embodied some of the twigs in the structure, as if for ribs, and occasionally she snipped off a spruce twig to use in shaping the globular nest. At last the bottom, or basketlike part, arose to meet the top of the nest and the industrious goldcrest was hidden from sight as she labored.

The creation was really a silken cocoon, in the walls of which was suspended enough moss, hair, and feathers to render it a non-conductor of heat, cold, and moisture. This primitive incubator was made of the same fine, dark yellow-green moss, Hypnum uncinatum, that seems characteristic of the habitations of the golden-crowned kinglet in this locality, Usnea longissima, a long, fringelike lichen, and animal silk. More of the gray-green Usnea lichen was used in the hammocklike band around the middle of the nest than in other parts of the well-made structure. The lining consisted of rabbit hair, I think, and partridge feathers. The wall of the abode was all of an inch and a half thick, and the window in the roof measured an inch and a half in diameter.

Apparently the female alone builds the nest. The male accompanies her and sings as she gathers nesting material and builds. Bent (1964) provides descriptions of other golden-crowned kinglets’ nests from the Northeast, and he documents the birds’ habit of lining the nests with feathers. Ruffed grouse (“partridge”) feathers appear to be used in almost all nests. The breast and body feathers of grouse are of course rather huge for the small kinglet’s nest, but the birds insert these feathers into their nest lining so that the quills point down into the bottom of the nest and the natural curve of the feather reaches over the top, forming a soft flexible curtainlike cover.

The majority of songbirds breeding in New England have four to five eggs per clutch. Kinglets have a whopping eight to eleven in a single clutch. They lay so many eggs and their nests are so small that, unlike other birds, the eggs are in two layers, usually five on the bottom and four on top. The bee-sized kinglet hatchlings are pink, blind, and naked. Stanwood (in Bent 1964, p. 388), in describing the young, says:

A kinglet incubating all of its eggs, with the help of its hot feet.

At the approach of the parent birds, they raise their little, palpitating bodies and open wide their tiny, orange-red mouths for food. These mouths are about the color of the meat of a peach around the stone. The veins showing through the thin skin give the bodies much the same tone. At first the young are fed by regurgitating partly digested food; later moths, caterpillars, and other insects furnish their diet. They are very fond of spruce bud moths and caterpillars. A beautiful triple spruce was attacked by these pests and almost denuded of its foliage. I noticed the kinglets frequenting this tree a great deal. In a season or two, the foliage was as luxuriant as it had been in the past. Such are the good offices performed by the golden-crowned kinglets and their young. The feet of the young are large and strong for the size of their bodies. If a person attempts to lift one from the nest, the little fellow will tear the lining