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A recent experience with a tiny over-wintering bird set me to thinking: what are the advantages for a bird in being little? I mean really small, such as £l hummingbird's three inches.
It seems that fascination with hummingbirds is derived from their size and their seeming lack of awareness of big objects; us, for example. One took a sip from a feeder in Lee Trott's hand once; she was taking it to be filled. * I get many letters and even more telephone calls and personal comments about hummingbirds. "They are so bold," wrote one correspondent. Their feistiness and tameness, plus the small size, are at the root of our fascination with this mite of a bird.
Is it that we don't appear at threat to hummingbirds? We are not perceived as predators in search of a meal. What about hawks and owls? For even a smallish hawk such as a Sharp-shinned to go after a hummingbird would be equivalent to us expending great energy and much time after one shrimp. As for owls, these birds are nocturnal hunters and hummingbirds are creatures of sunlight.
Hummingbirds have been ensnared in spider webs and stuck on thistle $pit)es. One writer observed a hummingbird caught by a preying mantis. Large dragon flies have been known to capture hummingbirds and ride their backs to the ground, and frogs occasionally snatch them from the air. It would seem that these predators perceived hummingbirds as insects. Indeed, the first European settlers thpught them moths.
Back to my early November encounter with a Ruby-crowned Kinglet for that is what I heard chattering to itself in the maple in our side yard. I went to investigate, sure I knew the bird making that dry sounds The dimunitive bird, less than four inches long, was searching for insect eggs at the tips of twigs and was so intent on this search that it ignored me and fluttered to within two feet of my face.
Hn A Field Guide To the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson referred to the kingjet as "A tiny stub-tailed birdlet." That it is. Both the Ruby-crowned and the Golden-crowned Kinglets spend their winters in the southeastern states to which they migrate in short, easy
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