Kinglets

For a very brief period in spring and fall, the tops of the hackberry trees in the backyard are a flutter with the busy antics of these 2 small birds. They were here about a week ago, but now the leaves are mostly gone, and so are they. Kinglets are very small passerines that are sometimes classified as Old World Warblers, and are part of the family Regulidae. Regulidae comes from the Latin word regulus, which signifies "king" or "prince", and refers to the brightly colored crowns of the adults.