EASTERN GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET 389 



neck concolor with back, etc., the color more brownish olive, and 

 texture of plumage much looser." There is no orange or yellow in 

 the crown of either sex. 



The first winter plumage is acquired by a partial postjuvenal molt, 

 involving all the contour feathers and the lesser wing coverts, but 

 not the rest of the wings or the tail. The molt begins early in 

 August, and after its completion the young birds are practically 

 indistinguishable from the adults of their respective sexes. The 

 young male has acquired the orange and yellow crown, bordered 

 with black, and the yoimg female has the yellow crown patch. 



There is apparently no spring molt, and wear is not very conspicuous 

 until late in the season. Year-old birds and adults have a complete 

 postnuptial molt beginning in July. The fall and winter plumage is 

 more brightly colored than the worn summer plumage, the upperparts 

 being more decidedly olivaceous, and the underparts are strongly 

 suffused with pale buffy-olive. 



Food. — No comprehensive analysis of the food of the golden- 

 crowned kinglet seems to have been made, but it apparently consists 

 almost entirely of insects, their larvae and eggs, and other forms of 

 minute animal life. 



These items are obtained in various ways from different sources, 

 but mainly from trees and shrubs. The kinglet feeds largely on bark 

 beetles, scale insects, and the eggs of injurious moths and plant lice, 

 which it obtains from the trunks, branches, and twigs of trees and 

 bushes, mainly the coniferous trees. 



Edward H. Forbush (1907) writes: "At Wareham, on Dec. 25, 1905, 

 I watched the Gold-crest hunting its insect food amid the pines. The 

 birds were fluttering about among the trees. Each one would hover 

 for a moment before a tuft of pine 'needles,' and then either alight 

 upon it and feed, or pass on to another. I examined the 'needles' 

 after the kinglets had left them, and could find nothing on them; but 

 when a bird was disturbed before it had finished feeding, the spray 

 from which it had been driven was invariably found to be infested 

 with numerous black specks, the eggs of plant lice. Evidently the 

 birds were cleaning each spray thoroughly, as far as they went." 

 Again, he saw kinglets feeding in the pines near his home, mainly 

 on the trunks and the larger branches; they were feeding on the eggs 

 of the aphids, which "were deposited in masses on the bark of the 

 pines from a point near the ground up to a height of thirty-five feet. 

 The trees must have been infested with countless thousands of these 

 eggs, for the band of Kinglets remained there until March 25, almost 

 three months later, apparently feeding most of the time on these eggs. 

 When they had cleared the branches the little birds fluttered about 

 the trunks, hanging poised on busy wing, like Hummingbirds before 



