100 GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET. 
having a creamy-white ground-color, over which are profusely scattered minute dots of 
brown with a reddish tinge. 
The Ruby-crown, like so many of our small birds, destroys immense numbers of 
noxious insects, especially those small “‘pests’’ which infest our fruit and ornamental 
trees and shrubs. 
NAMES: Rupy-crowNED KINGLET, Ruby-crown, Ruby-crowned Wren (Edw.), Ruby-crowned Warbler (Pen- 
nant).— Rubin-Goldhahnchen. (Germ.)—Roitelet rubis (Buff.). 
SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Motacilla calendula Linn. (1766). Sylvia calendula Lath. (1790). REGULUS 
CALENDULA Licnt. (1823), Aud., Nutt., Baird, Coues, and A. O. U. Reguloides calendula Bonap. 
(1850). Phyllobasileus calendula Cab. (1853). Regulus rubineus Vieill. (1807). F 
.DESCRIPTION: Sexes alike. Above, olive-green, brighter on rump; wings and tail dusky, edged with 
yellowish; two white cross-bars on the wings. Underparis, white, tinged with creamy-yellow or 
greenish-gray. Crown with a concealed patch of rich scarlet or ruby-red. White ring around the eye. 
Length about 4.25 inches. Wing about 2.20; tail, 1.75 inch. 
GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET. 
Regulus satrapa LIcHT. 
PLATE VII. 
T IS winter. The ground is covered with a mantle of snow. Only a few of our 
A feathered friends are to be seen or heard. Most of them have migrated to the 
South, some even to the tropics, where they enjoy abundance of food, and a genial 
climate. Many even of those birds arriving from the high arctic regions suffer from 
lack of food, or the rigors of the season. Still the landscape is not entirely desolate. 
Among the dense thickets bordering the woods, in the underwood of the forest, in 
farm-yards and orchards, along the osage-orange hedge-rows, and near fences, we find 
troops of finches. Occasionally we see numbers of Titmice busily engaged among the 
twigs of the trees and shrubs, and now and then we hear even their familiar chicka- 
dee-dee-dee. Among the roaming flocks of these active birds, we frequently observe 
numerous dainty GOLDEN-cROWNED KinGLeETSs, cheerfully hopping through trees and 
shrubs, always on the look-out for insects and their eggs and larve. It is truly astonish- 
ing, how these delicate pigmies are able to survive a temperature of 20 to 30° below zero. 
At times, when the branches are covered with snow and ice, so that the birds are unable 
to find sufficient food, they do, indeed, appear to lose their good spirit, and hop more 
slowly about with ruffled plumage. Mr. Ridgway’s admirable plate introduces us to a 
bleak winter-landscape, the monotony of which is broken by the two charming little 
Golden-crowned Kinglets. 
It appears to be of a more hardy nature than the Ruby-crown, and better enabled 
to endure the rigors of a northern winter. Doubtless the majority of these birds also 
move further south, passing the winter in great numbers in the South Atlantic and Gul 
States, In Texas, I found the Golden-crown to be one of the most abundant of all 
