Listen up. A Golden-crowned Kinglet is heard singing quietly in the upper boughs of a spruce tree. Singing on the Sundew Trail near the ocean’s edge on Schoodic Peninsula, you can also hear a gently rolling surf on the rocky shore. The song of the Golden-Crowned Kinglet, heard May through July, is a series of very high-pitched accelerating “seet” notes followed by softer, lower-pitched chatter (though its “seet” call can be heard throughout the year). Among the smallest birds in North America, the sounds of the tiny Golden-crowned Kinglet are a subtle yet common sound in the spruce forests of Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park.
This snippet is from a fresh-pressed track of the 2020 field season recorded on June 18. Like all our 2020 recordings, it is not yet listed on our blog nor has it yet been uploaded to Cornell’s eBird, nor some uploaded/archived in the Macaulay Library. But soon. And, we’ve been busy preparing several recordings that typify the Schoodic Peninsula for a soon-to-be-released sound map led by the National Park Service, called Sounds of Your Park. We share this brief recording with you as a preview from a tiny, year-round resident of the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park.