the gold-chickens has a straight and tender beak. The nose-openings are covered by one single stiff, chamber-nicely feathered feather. The vertex-feathers are long and far-ray-y and can be raised to a little (signal-effect) bonnet.
The type is represented in North America, Eurasia and Taiwan with 5 types. Winter-gold-chickens (Regulus regulus) and summer-gold-chickens (Regulus ignicapillus) are native with us. With 9 cm of length and a weight of 5-6 g is it our smallest Singvögel.
Both types have a dense, gray-green plumage, from which itself a black-restricted vertex-stripe orange (therefore, the male of the Sommergoldhähnchens is called also little "fireball, that the Wintergoldhähnchens also "Rotkrönchen") or pure-yellow (with the female) lifts off. An essential difference is a more powerfully black eye-stripe, that the winter-gold-chicken lacks, with the summer-gold-chicken; the summer-gold-chicken also is more powerfully colored altogether.
Spread The spread-areas of both types split strongly. In Europe, summer and winter-gold-chickens like twin-types, that usually brood in different biotopes, behave. Over the formation of bastards or zwischenartliche, competition is not anything known, as well like the actual relationship-circumstances still unclear is.
The winter-gold-chicken has its brood-areas in the lowlands and in the mountains of the deepest spruce-forest of Siberian valleys as far as to the sub-alpine needle-forests of almost all Eurasian high mountain regions. As a part-pickpocket, our summer-birds hike southwards in large troops regularly in the autumn mostly, however not over Southern Europe out. its continuance in Central Europe often is supplemented through Zuzügler from the high north.
However, the summer-gold-chicken against it seem mainly to stand-bird in foliage-forests, Mischwäldern and sub-alpine forests of Europe, also in the dense needle-forests of the northern lowland and in the mountains of the eastern one also like the occidental North America.
Reproduction The brood-behavior of both types is similar. The winter-gold-chickens like to hang its nest highly over the ground in a conifer, under dense foliage in a branch-fork or in branches close to the branch-top, on. From lichens, mosses and webs, both spouses build a firmly entwined, nearly spherical nest, that is firmly interconnected with the branch-work, from end April. At its upper side, a narrow access remains free. It is padded inner with feathers. The 8-11 eggs are hatched (12-17 days) only by the female; the male takes part again in the feeding of the dunigen of giving birth. After 14-21 days, the squabs become independent, a second yearly-brood joins.
Scientific name: