The Kinglets are a small family of very small arboreal birds in the Northern
Hemisphere. Whether these tiny sprites deserve family status is a matter
of some debate (see below), but they are rather easy to recognize as a
group: tiny, flitty, insect-gleaners of coniferous forests, all having
a colorful crown pattern. The common & widespread example in North
America is the Ruby-crowned Kinglet (left and below) which leaves
its summer home in coniferous forests to spread widely in all sorts of
woodlands in the lowlands for winter. This is the plainest of the kinglets
since its ruby-red crown of the male is almost always hidden (it can just
barely be seen in the photo below if you have a good monitor). However,
when the crest is erected, it is striking and dramatic. The first Ruby-crowned
Kinglet that I ever saw -- back on Christmas Day 1965 -- had its crest
up and was very agitated, full of "personality." It made a big impression
on me, then a 13-year-old kid. Because the birds are so small and active,
it took me years to get even these okay shots.
All
six kinglets are in the genus Regulus. The other North American
taxon is the Golden-crowned Kinglet R. satrapa, a very hard bird
to see well since it sticks to the tops of dense conifers, but it has an
extremely high-pitched call that, once learned, allows one to locate them
much more often. It has lovely red & yellow crown stripes if you can
ever see one decently. The Old World species also have head patterns as
evidenced by their English names: Goldcrest R. regulus (Palearctic),
Orangecrest R. teneriffae (Canary Is.), Firecrest R. ignicapillus
(w. Palearctic), and Flamecrest R. goodfellowi (Taiwan).
Kinglets are often treated as a subfamily of the Sylvidae (Old World warblers; Voous 1977, Urban et al. 1997), which I understand is the tentative position of the Handbook of the Birds of the World project, or a part of an even broader Muscicapidae (Mayr & Amadon 1951, A.O.U. 1983). Sibley & Monroe (1990), followed by Clements (1991), place it nearer to the Pycononotidae (Babblers) on DNA evidence. The most recent A.O.U. checklist notes that "molecular data support ranking this group as a family of uncertain affinities (Sibley & Ahlquist 1990)" and place it between the Bulbuls and Old World warblers. This seems the most reasonable solution to me, and so I diverge from following the HBW sequence, preferring to award the Kinglets familial status.
In western North America, particularly west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades from California north to British Columbia, there is a significant field identification problem between Ruby-crowned Kinglet (a winter visitor to the lowlands) and Hutton's Vireo Vireo huttoni (a resident of oak and oak/pine woods). Even beginning birders should learn to separate these two common but similar species. Click HERE for a page on the Identification of Hutton's Vireo v. Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
Photos: The Ruby-crowned Kinglets were both taken at Moss Landing, Monterey Co., California; the upper left on 16 Nov 1998 and the next on 15 Oct 1998. All photos © D. Roberson; all rights reserved.
Bibliographic notes
There is no "family book" of which I'm aware, and the Handbook of the Birds of World series will apparently not cover this as a separate family (although we can hope they'll change their mind).
Other literature cited:
American Ornithologists' Union. 1983. Check-list of North American birds, 6th ed. Washington, D.C.TOPAmerican Ornithologists' Union. 1998. Check-list of North American birds, 7th ed. Washington, D.C.
Clements, J. F. 1991. Birds of the World: A Check List. 4th ed. Ibis Publishing, Vista, CA.
Mayr, E., and D. Amadon. 1951. A classification of recent birds. Amer. Mus. Novitates 1946: 453-473.
Sibley, C. G., and J. E. Ahlquist. 1990. Phylogeny and Classification of Birds: A Study in Molecular Evolution. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT.
Sibley, C. G., and B. L. Monroe, Jr. 1990. Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven.
Urban, E. K., C. H. Fry, and S. Keith, eds. 1997. The Birds of Africa. Vol. 5. Academic Press, London.
Voous, K. H. 1977. List of recent Holarctic bird species. Academic Press, London.