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June's High Desert Bird-of-the-Month:  Wrens

The House Wren

A plain brown bird with an effervescent voice, the House Wren is a common backyard bird over nearly the entire Western Hemisphere. Listen for its rush-and-jumble song in summer and you’ll find this species zipping through shrubs and low tree branches, snatching at insects. House Wrens will gladly use nest boxes, or you may find their twig-filled nests in old cans, boots, or boxes lying around in your garage.

House Wrens are small and compact, with a flat head and fairly long, curved beak. They are short-winged, often keeping their longish tail either cocked above the line of the body or slightly drooped.  Their color is a subdued brown overall with darker barring on the wings and tail. The pale eyebrow that is characteristic of so many wren species is much fainter in House Wrens.

Bewick’s Wren

If you come across a noisy, hyperactive little bird with bold white eyebrows, flicking its long tail as it hops from branch to branch, you may have spotted a Bewick’s Wren. These master vocalists belt out a string of short whistles, warbles, burrs, and trills to attract mates and defend their territory, or scold visitors with raspy calls. Bewick’s Wrens are still fairly common in much of western North America.

Bewick’s Wrens are medium-sized wrens with a slender body and a strikingly long tail often held upright. They have slender, long bills that are slightly downcurved. Bewick’s Wrens are subdued brown-and-gray wrens with a long, brow-like white stripe over the eye. The back and wings are plain brown; underparts gray-white; and the long tail is barred with black and tipped with white spots. Males and females look the same.

If you live within the Bewick’s Wren’s range, try attracting this bird to your yard with native shrubs such as willow, mesquite, elderberry and chaparral plants or by keeping a brush pile.  They will often eat suet.

Fun Facts:

• Breeding from Canada southward to the southern tip of South America, the House Wren has one of the largest ranges of any bird found in the New World.
• A male House Wren may lay claim to a nesting cavity by filling it with more than 400 small twigs. If the female likes what she sees, she will then take over, adding the nest cup and lining it with grass, inner bark, hair, and feathers.
• The stick filled cavity of the House Wren nest provides “stilts” for the nest cup which allows rainwater to collect in the bottom of the nesting cavity without endangering the eggs or young.
• House Wrens are known for destroying the eggs or young of other birds nesting within 100 feet of their own nest. In some areas, this is the primary source of nesting failure for Tree Swallows and Chickadees.
• Bewick's Wren populations have declined sharply in the eastern United States. The declines appear most likely due to competition from the nest -destroying House Wren whose range expansion has accompanied the loss of the Bewick’s Wren.
• Bewick’s Wrens favor dry, brushy areas, chaparral, scrub, thickets in open country and open woodlands near rivers and streams.  They are at home in gardens, residential areas, and parks in cities and suburbs.
• The male Bewick’s Wren learns its song while still on the parents’ territory.  It learns the song not from its father, but rather from the neighboring territorial males.  The song repertoire developed before the first winter is retained for life.
• Courting Bewick’s Wrens normally form monogamous pairs.  While they’re setting up house and even after the female has begun incubating eggs, the male and female often forage together.  This may help the male prevent his partner from mating with another bird.
• At the sound of approaching humans, a female Bewick’s Wren incubating eggs usually flushes quietly from her next cavity, but remains nearby and scolds.  Some females, however, sit tightly on their eggs even when disturbed.
• Audubon first identified the Bewick’s Wren in 1821 while in Louisiana. He named it for his friend, Thomas Bewick, a British engraver.
• Bewick’s Wrens cock their long tails up over their backs, often flicking their tails from side to side or fanning them as they skulk through tangles of branches and leaves searching for insects.  During breeding season, males sing vigorously from prominent perches.

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