OCR Text |
Show Carolina Wren Ol?52 National Wildlife Federation 1 There is a group of diminutive brown birds whose tails are usually us-ually held either erect or depressed but who rarely hold any pose for a considerable length of time. The sounds they produce are usually all out of proportion to the size of the birds. The group is probably prob-ably best known by its representative, represen-tative, the house wren, which obligingly ob-ligingly occupies or at least appears ap-pears to occupy the bird houses put up by hopeful young naturalists. Closely related to the wrens are the wren-tits and the dippers or water ouzels, with which we are not here particularly concerned. The wrens are usually the size of the smaller sparrows. The Carolina Caro-lina wren measures 6 inches including in-cluding the 2 inch tail and the ' beak which is about 23 inch long. The Carolina wren is rather conspicuously con-spicuously reddish for a wren and lacks consipcuous markings except ex-cept for a long white or pale brown stripe over each eye. The under parts are buff and the throat whitish. The wings are short as they are in most wrens. The black bars on the flanks of the winter wren and the white-edged white-edged tail of the Bewick's wren are lacking in the Carolina wren. Carolina wrens breed from northern nor-thern Florida to central Texas north to Nebraska and the lower valleys of the Hudson and Connecticut Connec-ticut rivers. Sometimes they are found farther north into Ontario, Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin, but this is rather unusual. There are three subspecies recognized of which the Florida wren extends the range into Florida and the Lomita wren from Texas across the Mexican border. Possibly the most startling thing about the Carolina wren is that it more or less is to be found over its range at any time of the year. On occasion it may sing, even with the snow on the ground, its ecstatically ecstat-ically repeated "tea kettle" or "whee-udel" song. This of course endears it to naturalists who at the winter season may be more or less starved for a sound such as they hear from this popular bird. The nest is a mass of vegetable material commonly hidden in stumps, fallen tree-tops or sometimes some-times in building There is an inner in-ner lining of finer material. In the nest the 4 to 6 eggs are laid. They are white or cream with cinnamon brown and . lavendar markings. There may be 2 or 3 broods a year and incubation for 12 days is carv ried on chiefly by the female that is smaller than the -male usually. The food of the Carolina wren is probably 95 percent insects and includes chinch bugs, cockroaches, grasshoppers, crickets, cotton-boll weevils, cucumber beetles, moths and similar pests. Although this bird is less likely to come to human hu-man habitations than the house wren, it can be enticed to a feeding feed-ing station by hamburger. For that matter, in these days that might not be a trait limited to our feathered friends. Apparently the wren has no habits contrary to those that suits man's interests and it has been awarded the honor of being the state bird of South Carolina. The National Wildlife Federation Federa-tion encourages the study of birds of this type through banding and other means because those who learn to study one form of nature carefully usually have the habit of being rational in their evaluation evalu-ation of other forms of nature. E. Laurence Palmer |