We (my students and I) were in the woods behind my house gathering
materials for firemaking. I had a group of 3 kids and we were looking for a
hemlock, the magic fire tree, and we found a good one, with many low
branches. We ducked up inside the low branches of the tree to look for the
dead twigs. It was sort of like being in a tent, since the branches hung
down all around us. Immediately after we entered the hemlock "room" a pair
of golden-crowned kinglets hopped out into view, right in front of us. We
played statue, all of us standing very still. The kinglets seemed quite
curious about us, and one flitted down and landed on a branchlet, within a
foot of the face of the smallest of the students. At this point I counted
there were at least 5 kinglets in this little flock, all of which were in a
space about 6 feet square that we all shared. The kinglets were very active,
flitted here and there, right above our heads, flying between us and all
around us. It felt like being in a tent with kinglets. Then, quite suddenly,
they all just dissapeared out of the space. In one second, they were all
gone.

The students decided that they had been gifted a magic of nature and the
oldest of them was quite convinced it had some kind of meaning. They all sat
together around the campfire talking about birds and they all concluded, to
my delight, that they needed much more information about kinglets and other
birds. So today I was busy guiding them to sources of information about
kinglets. If you have any particular good recommendations about kinglet
life history, I would be delighted to forward it to them.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, teacher, writer
The Environmental Science School
Monroe, WA

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