Ruby Crowned Kinglet

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Ruby crowned kinglet is known to live for quite a few years. The minimum recorded longevity for ruby-crowned kinglets is 4 years and 7 months which was captured at its second year of life. A female ruby crowned kinglet which was captured on January 7th 2003 in California and was released into the wild and was encounter again on January 5th 2007 also in California (8). They are not usually kept in captivity, when captured they are band and released into the wild. Ruby-crowned kinglets play a role in our ecosystem by helping to control pest population and eating insects. Many of the insects they eat are considered pests to humans (9). They also eat casebearers an invasive insect species, which may be harmful to certain plants. There are no …show more content…

Sometime, they are effected with some diseases that they carry which eventually leads to their death. They are preyed on by large birds and small mammals, for example the eastern-screech owls, gray jays, sharp-shinned hawks, common grackles, merlins, and red squirrels(9). In addition, gray jays are known to eat their eggs and red squirrels sometimes destroy their nests. Ruby-crowned kinglets are also harmed by the thorns of certain plants, such as greenbrier. Likewise, the sticky seeds of beggar's lice may attach to their feathers. Sometimes, Brown-headed cowbirds occasionally lay their eggs in ruby-crowned kinglets nest, but they usually choose to lay their eggs in the nests of larger birds. During migration, they encounter a lot of obstacles, both natural and man-made obstacles on the way. This leads to die-offs on the way, because most of them collide on high raised glass buildings, glass doors and windows. Deforestation is also affecting them, because the live in the wild and some of the tall trees where they build their nest are being demolished and used for domestic purposes. This may be the reason behind the decline in population for New Jersey. As we see from the total bird count in New Jersey (Fig 7) is declining. This graph obtained from the North American Breeding Bird Survey 1996 – 2013 Analysis show that

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