House Wren

A plain brown bird with an "effervescent" voice, the House Wren is a common backyard bird seen over almost all of the Western Hemisphere.

The House Wren is small and compact with a flat head and long curved beak. It has short wings and the tail is often held cocked above or slightly drooped from the body line.

The bird is a subdued brown with darker barring on the wings and tail. The pale eyebrow that is characteristic of wrens is quite pale in the House Wren.

House Wrens are very energetic and you may often see them hopping quickly through bushes pausing to sing their songs. They are found in open forests and forest edges, as well as backyards.

The House Wren has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the New World. It breeds from Canada through the West Indies and Central America, and southward to the southernmost point of South America.

Twigs make up most of the nest

House Wrens pile twigs into cavities to make a bed on which to build a soft cup lined with a few feathers, grasses, animal hair, snakeskin or string. Despite their small size, they are fierce competitors, often evicting larger birds, dragging eggs or young chicks out of a nest and sometimes even killing the adult birds. House Wrens are the main source of nest failure for bluebirds, Tree Swallows, Prothonotary Warblers and chickadees.

Nests in tree cavities or nest boxes can become infested with mites and other parasites. Wrens will often add spider egg sacs to their nesting materials. Once the spiders hatch, they help the wrens by devouring the nest parasites.

The House Wren's diet consists of spiders, beetles, caterpillars, earwigs, daddy longlegs, flies, leafhoppers and springtails. They will sometimes eat small snail shells for the calcium and grit.

As with many birds, you may hear a wren before you see it. The long song may be hard to learn because the notes are nondescript and because there is so much of it! It is loud and insistent, making it hard to believe that such a little bird is making all that noise.

Winter Wren

The Winter Wren is small in stature and incomparably energetic in voice and song. The secretive bird lives in moist dense forests in eastern North America. The best time to look for the bird in the Lehigh Valley is October through mid-March. It is not often seen here at warmer months of the year.

The Winter Wren is identifiable by its short tail, usually cocked upward. The plumage is dark brown overall and the bill is thin and pointed.

The bird often creeps among fallen logs and dense tangles, behaving like a mouse, as it searches for tiny prey. The Winter Wren stays out of sight, but gives an occasional kimp-kimp call note. Per unit weight, the Winter Wren delivers its song with 10 times more power than a crowing rooster!

In the summer the bird's habitat extends from Newfoundland to Manitoba. It also is found in the woodlands and underbrush of the upland Appalachians in the northern United States. During the winter, Winter Wrens are found in very dense woods, especially along stream beds and among fallen logs. Their winter range extends from the United States side of the Great Lakes deep into the southern states.

Winter Wrens feed mostly on insects including beetles, caterpillars, ants, small wasps, and some spiders, millipedes and snails. They usually search for prey among foliage, on twigs and tree trunks, and on the ground. When feeding low along stream banks, they may even pluck bugs from the water's surface.

An insectivore, the Winter Wren can remain in moderately cold—and even snowy—climates by foraging for insects on logs and in bark. Sometimes they will take large pupae or seeds.

In spring the male Winter Wren will ascend to high perches in conifers where they will sing a beautiful song of long-running musical trills. When courting, the male perches near the female with his wings half-opened and fluttering. His tail is spread and he moves it from side to side while he sings.

Nests are built in low cavities among upturned and downed trees, in rotten stumps or old woodpecker cavities, and in holes along stream banks. Both the male and female build a domed structure of grass, weeds, roots and moss, and they line it with animal hair and feathers. The female lays five or six eggs and incubates them for 14 to 16 days. Both parents feed the nestlings. After about 19 days, the chicks fledge.

A few years ago one April, we saw a Winter Wren along a creek in the Katellan State Gamelands near Wind Gap. It was a cute little bird!

Will Carolina Wrens make it through this winter?

What's more important to a bird's survival? The ability to withstand cold weather or access to food? 

Matt Miller, a senior science writer at The Nature Conservancy, says Carolina Wrens are losing ground because of the polar vortex--that extremely cold air mass that has been sweeping down from the Arctic this winter.

Carolina Wren

Miller writes, "While visiting my parents and brother in central Pennsylvania over the holidays, I enjoyed watching the antics of the Carolina Wrens visiting their bird feeders. They're fun birds to observe, always active and vocal."

Carolina Wrens have been expanding their range northward over recent decades, he points out. "They are not migrants: they live in a locale year round."

"However," he writes, "these birds don't fare well during periods of very cold weather. Since they don't migrate, they often perish."

That pattern is consistent with results of the Great Backyard Bird Count, held each February, he says.

"The Carolina Wren population eventually expands northwards again," he adds, "It takes time. According to Great Backyard Bird Count reports, it can be 10 years or more until Carolina Wrens return to northern states in numbers following a cold weather die-off."

After the frigid weather set in, he called his parents; they told him they have not seen a Carolina Wren since.

Several of Miller's readers suggest that it's not extreme temperature that harms the wrens--it's lack of food.

Richard Gregson says his hometown of Montreal, Canada, has had temperatures of minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit yet the wrens survive.

Carolina Wrens, he says, "are adapted for finding food around their feet in the leaf litter of forest floors and when there is a deep, crusty snow they cannot feed … unless they find a secondary food source such as a well stocked garden feeder."

Another reader, Sally Chambliss, writes of a similar experience. The Carolina Wrens in her neighborhood in western Massachusetts "are doing well" in the extreme cold "because I feed them beef suet and sunflower seeds. They have been in my area for a few years and have had several successful births in one of my backyard birdhouses. Suet is very important to their survival."

You can read full Miller's account on the winter survival prospects of Carolina Wrens and other animal species by clicking here.

How can you help? Carolina Wrens eat suet which is high in calories to help keep warm. They will also peck at sunflower seeds with no shell.