Friday, February 09, 2007

First sighting - Carolina Wren

I saw my first Carolina wren, Thryothorus ludovicianus of the year. I heard a bird chirping loudly in an Eastern pine. When I got up closer, it was at eye level and looked like some kind of sparrow but as I got closer still I could see the white eye stripe and characteristic upturned tail. I thought it was a sparrow because the tail wasn't as upright as it should have been - probably because of the cold - 17 degrees this morning. It also gave me a good scolding so that cinched it. It was rather fearless as I got up to about 5 feet from the bird. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me as I could have taken quite a good picture of it at this close range. I'll have to remember to take a camera with me on my dog walks.

Wrens are of the family Troglodytidae. I love that nomenclature. Troglodytes refers to cave dwellers so I wonder why they put wrens in that family of birds. Maybe it's because some nest in natural cavities. I guess it would be cavelike to something that small.

2 Comments:

Blogger Annie in Austin said...

Hello Ki,

Let's see if this comment makes it. I like wrens, too. I'm assuming we also have Carolina wrens here, and I love the way their little bodies sort of flit around among the herb troughs and containers.
At our last house wrens made a nest near a work table where my husband did woodwork, and were completely unphased by his presence. But if I came over to talk to him, the parent birds had a fit. I sneaked over and took a non-digital snap of the mother feeding a baby. If you get a photo, please post it.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

7:01 AM  
Blogger Ki said...

Hi Annie,
Sorry for the delay in replying. Unfortunately I didn't get the photo of your wrens.

One way to post it would be to open a Photobucket account, paste the link to your comment then people reading the comment could click on the link and bring up the photo...I think. Or attach the photo to an email and send it to me and I can post it.

It looks as if the Carolina wren's range may just include Austin. But you may be seeing a different kind of wren prob. the house wren or Bewick's wren in your area.

1:33 PM  

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