390 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



a flower, meanwhile rapidly pecking the clinging eggs from the bark." 



W. L. McAtee (1926) says: "If we may apply to eastern conditions 

 the findings of a study of the species in California, we may be sure 

 that the Kinglet consumes little if any vegetable food, and that it 

 gets numerous spiders as well as a variety of small insects principally 

 of the hymenoptera, beetles, bugs, and flies. Moths, caterpillars, and 

 small grasshoppers also are devoured. Forest pests taken are leaf 

 beetles, leaf hoppers, plant lice, and scale insects." F. H. King (1883) 

 says of nine specimens examined in Wisconsin, "two had eaten twelve 

 small diptera; three, nine small beetles; one, five caterpillars; one a 

 small chrysalid, and three, very small bits of insects, too fine to be 

 identified." Junius Henderson (1927) says that it has been "seen 

 feeding on locusts in Nebraska." Miss Stan wood mentioned in her 

 notes that the kinglets, old and young, are very fond of the spruce 

 bud moths and caterpillars, which are so destructive to the spruces 

 in Maine. 



Kinglets are expert flycatchers, taking small flying insects readily 

 on the wing. Some observers have expressed surprise at seeing king- 

 lets feeding on the ground, but it is not a rare occurrence. Francis H. 

 Allen tells me that, when feeding on the ground, it progresses by 

 surprisingly long hops. Miss Stanwood says in her notes that "the 

 kinglet in winter finds considerable of his food on the snow under the 

 trees; he even went under branches partly submerged by the snow 

 and fed on the melted places close to the base of the trunk." 



The golden-crowned kinglet has been observed apparently drink- 

 ing the sap that flows from the fresh drillings of sap-sucking wood- 

 peckers, but it may be that the birds are after the insects that are 

 also attracted to such places. Francis Zirrer, of Hayward, Wis., has 

 sent me the following note on the subject: "During the flow of maple 

 sap the woodpeckers, especially the hairy, occasionally tap a tree. 

 On a warm day, especially toward the end of the flow, sap thickens, 

 ferments, and attracts many insects, mostly flies and small beetles, 

 of which many stick to the syrupy fluid. Noticing a number of small 

 fluttering forms in front of a tree trunk some 30 feet from the ground, 

 I walked closer to investigate. To my surprise, there was a small 

 flock of kinglets picking insects from the bark of the tree. In the 

 course of the same afternoon and the following days, I found many 

 more birds taking advantage of the bountiful supply; besides the two 

 kinglets, woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, and a phoebe." 



Milton P. Skinner (1928), referring to the winter food of this king- 

 let in North Carolina, writes: "Sometimes they hunt the opening 

 blossoms of trees and shrubs to prey on the small insects attracted 

 by the flowers, and quite often they look over the bases of the bunches 

 of loblolly and long-leaf needles for the tiny insects that hide there. 



