Out of the Way-Back Machine: A Ruby-Crowned Kinglet with a Ruby Crown

Sometimes you just forget. One of the joys of digital photography (after 18 years it still feels new and innovative; yes, I'm old) is that you can take hundreds of lousy pictures, find that one lucky wonderful shot, and post that one because it makes you look like a photographer. And it doesn't cost as much as paper prints. But when you have tens of thousands of pictures in the files, it's easy to forget just how lucky you got at one point. And so it is with today's offering, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a picture I took back in February of 2014.

During the right time of year I'll see Ruby-crowned Kinglets almost every time I walk along the Tuolumne River, but they are very active and hard to photograph. The ruby crown is even harder to see and photograph because it is only on the males, and it is usually hidden. I was going over some if the first pictures I took with my Lumix camera and came across this shot of a kinglet displaying the crown, and I realized that I had forgotten about it and had never posted it here on the blog. So...here it is! One of my favorite shots of this "royal" kinglet.