South Carolina’s little big bird
By Burt Glover
I’m keeping a close eye on the Carolina wrens this year. If you’re smart, you will do the same. It’s nesting season, and the pair in my yard have gone into overdrive. I watch as the male hops around the yard, collecting small sticks, pine straw, leaves and cypress branchlets. With his beak full, he flies to the porch railing, chattering all the while, and pauses. He bobs up-and-down for a short time, looking one way, and then the other. I know what he is thinking. “Which nest do I build?”
It is the male’s responsibility to build the basic nests — and I do mean “nests.” The male Carolina wren will build upward of 6 to 12 nests during this time, in various places. Those various places might include birdhouses, woodpecker holes in trees, vine thickets, flower pots, inside mailboxes, shoes, coat pockets, tin cans, under the hood of a car, bags, trash piles…. The male will build nests just about anywhere.
It is up to the female to choose the home of her liking and finish it off, adding a soft interior of fine grass, hair and/or moss. Currently, “my” male wren has two nests started in the eaves on either side of my front porch, and one more in a hollow beneath the gutter on my back porch — and who knows where else? I’ll have to watch closely to see that he doesn’t build in an inappropriate place. It wouldn’t do to be driving around town with a family of wrens underneath my hood.
All wrens are grouped into the family Troglodytidae– which is Latin for “cave dweller.” If you’ve ever seen a Carolina wren nest, you might understand this designation. Their nests are built into a dome-like structure — a cave with a small side entrance. Often, there will be a woven extension to the entrance; a type of porch landing ramp. Examine the nest, itself, and you may find string, snake skins, feathers, plastic trash and other items woven into the structure. Wrens may raise up to three broods per year. In many cases, the male is left tending the fledglings from the nest out in the yard, while the female is sitting on the next clutch of eggs.
One native American tribe had a name for this jaunty, cinnamon-colored bird– the English transcribed it to a word that was about 38 letters long. The translation of the name was “little bird with a big voice.” The Carolina wren does have just about the loudest song of any bird around. The books all tell you to listen out for their “tea kettle, tea kettle” song for identification. The fact is that they can sing an average of 32 different phrase patterns. I’ve never heard the “Tea kettle” song around here. Most often, I hear a song more like “Jibity, Jibity, Jibity.”
A male Carolina wren will belt out his song year-round, aggressively defending his territory. Female wrens have the ability to sing, as well. Many times, I will hear her give a rattling-type call immediately after he has let loose with one of his territorial songs. The reason for this, I’ve always heard, is that she looks so much like him that she is in danger of being mistaken for an intruding rival. She gives her rattling call as if to say, “Don’t attack me! I’m your mate!!”
The Carolina wren is the South Carolina state bird– though it wasn’t always so. In 1930, following deliberations between the mourning dove and the Carolina wren, the South Carolina Federated Women’s Clubs, (led by Miss Claudia Phelps of Aiken), chose the Carolina wren as the state bird. Throughout the 1930s, South Carolinians recognized the Carolina wren as the state bird, even as this was not yet an official designation.. In 1939, when when it came to make it official, the SC legislature broke with the practice among other states to honor the selection of women’s clubs and, instead, chose the mockingbird. So South Carolina’s first official state bird was the mockingbird.
It wasn’t until 1948, and for reasons unknown, that the earlier ruling was rescinded and the Carolina wren officially restored to its place as the state bird. The occasion was used to launch political barbs, (see clipping below) and was also accompanied for a while by a certain prickliness among some South Carolinians over the usurpation of the mockingbird.
As for insect control, Carolina wrens are relentless. There is no nook or cranny on my house or in my yard that they have not explored. I hear a scratching or knocking at my windows… I open the curtains… and there will be a wren clinging to the woodwork, snatching up a spider egg sac. They hop around, searching holes underneath stumps, inside garages and squirrel’s nests, underneath tree bark; every square inch. They particularly love spiders, but they also take a heavy toll on crickets, stink bugs, grasshoppers, ticks, roaches, caterpillars, beetles, bees, moths and many other insects. Occasionally, they will partake of the seeds/berries of smilax, poison ivy, sweetgum, Virginia creeper, and others.
Between their loud song, their clutters of nests, and their sheer busyness, the resourceful little Wren makes for a big presence in a yard. The presence only grows with the progression of spring, with so many mouths to feed. I’ve read that it takes many hundreds of insects per day to feed just one nest of wrens, which is yet one more reason to appreciate our state bird — and to lay off the pesticides! I’m happy to accommodate as many nests as the wrens want to build on my porch and eave — as long as they stay out of my car engine.
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Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond