This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we’re training our eyes and ears to the wetland edges for the fleeting signs of the Winter Wren (Troglodytes hiemalis).
While walking and winding with our waterways in winter, one should watch the wooded walls of wetlands and wallows for the wary Winter Wren. ‘Tis a tiny bird of swamps and swales that settles into the South, as the sunlight shrinks and the shade trees slumber. Beige and brown from bill to bobtail, it blends beautifully into the background and black ground of our bottomlands, unseen and unheard until the unknown approaches. At the detection of trespass, any hapless passerby, alarm bells begin to ring within the wetlands. The Winter Wren will explode into action unleashing a rapid volley of rattling and chattering as it bounces and bobs from bush to buttress in a beeline towards the offense. For a lucky few, they’ll get to view the Winter Wren unobstructed, perched atop a sunlit stump in all its cryptic glory. Yet for the rest of us the best we’ll get is fleeting sideways glances between the boughs at the bottom of a brush pile.
The Winter Wren is one of five species of Wren that call the Lowcountry home and it only hangs out here in the coldest month of the year. It shares a genus, and a bit of its likeness, with the Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). The Winter Wren is distinct among our Wrens for its overall darker and more uniform plumage, tiny size, and its stubby tail. It’s also quite particular in its habitat preferences during our South Carolina winters, sticking almost exclusively to the soggy, shaded soils of our bottomlands, floodplains, backwaters, bogs, bays, and the brushy margins of shallow ponds. The Winter Wren’s calls are short, sharp, and higher pitched than other Wrens and it’s not afraid to voice complaints if you start tromping into its domain. They are almost always heard well before they are seen, often from some ever shrinking distance away as it bounds from tree base to tree base towards any uninvited guest. Winter Wrens have a vexing habit for bird watchers, staying low to the ground and rarely perching in full view, preferring to stay under cover while sneaking peaks between gaps in debris on the forest floor, rarely staying in one spot for more than a few seconds.
