Bird of the Month: Carolina Wren
Carolina Wren. Photo by Jeff Bryant.
By Roger Digges, CCAS Vice-President
I know that I wrote in July that the Eastern Kingbird is my favorite bird, and I am quite fond of their elegant appearance, boldness, and devotion to their young. However, having just come inside from filling my bird feeders, and not only been loudly scolded by a ball of fluff weighing less than an ounce, a bird which refused to budge, but also one which I enjoy watching as it forages among the rocks of our artificial waterfall, I may have found a new candidate.
Perhaps what one notices first about a Carolina Wren is its voice. Exiting my car after a walk on a chilly winter morning, it’s hard to believe that a bird so small can sing that LOUD. But they do. Even better, other wrens in the neighborhood answer it in a marvelous call-and-response chorus. Despite the cold, I find myself shivering outside the garage, listening to the music.
While Carolina Wrens are the largest member of the wren family in our area, less than six inches long, they’re still pretty small. Since they prefer densely vegetated areas, you may also have a hard time seeing them. If you’re patient, and follow their rolling teakettle-teakettle-teakettle song or a number of other vocalizations they make (the Merlin app can be helpful), you may find this bird, rich brown plumage above, coppery yellow undersides, a prominent white eyebrow stripe, a downcurved thin beak, and a long striped tail cocked upward. You can find these birds in our wooded natural areas, neighborhoods with dense trees and shrubs, or anywhere they can easily blend in.
You can attract Carolina Wrens to your yard by providing the right habitat, which means plenty of places for them to hide. They like brush piles, rock piles, closely packed perennials, dense shrubs, pretty much anything but a neat and tidy yard. As I mentioned above, they love drinking from and foraging around our water feature and often overwinter in the shelter of its rocks and soil. If you don’t have such hiding places, because Carolina Wrens are cavity nesters, you can provide nest boxes for them. Visit nestwatch.org, search Carolina Wren, and you can find plans for building a nest box suitable for them.
Providing food is another way to attract these bold, attractive, musical birds to your yard. The Carolinas in our yard visit our suet cage frequently. They also eat our black oil sunflower seed, although allaboutbirds.org notes that they prefer their sunflower seeds hulled and also chow down on peanut hearts and mealworms.
Carolina Wrens are year-round residents in southeastern North America from eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to the Atlantic seaboard, from southernmost Ontario province to the Yucatan peninsula. While they reside permanently in nearly all of Illinois, because they are sensitive to severe cold, their numbers decrease in our state from south to north. As our climate continues to warm, Carolina Wrens have slowly shifted their range further north.
Like Blue Jays, these birds mate for life. According to allaboutbirds.org the pair “stay together on their territory year-round, and forage and move around the territory together.” If you see one in your neighborhood, you can be almost certain there is another. They build a 3- to 9-inch long, 3- to 6-inch wide cup-shaped domed nest together, the female providing the finishing touch by lining the cup. She alone incubates 3 to 7 eggs for about 12 to 16 days. The newly hatched young will leave the nest after about 10 to 16 days.
Unlike many of the birds I have highlighted in this blog, Carolina Wrens are doing well. There are 19 million of them and their numbers are actually increasing. While we may not need to protect them against a decline, we can certainly enjoy creating space for them to be our neighbors.