How to Find a Pacific Wren

“If a Pacific Wren turns up at this time of year, it won’t be singing, but calling,” said Wen as the bird survey team set foot in Canyon Section on October 16, 2019. Everyone turned to Kitty, expecting that our ear-birder extraordinaire would know the calls. She took out her iPod without hesitation and began to play Geoffrey Keller’s recordings of Pacific Wren. After the long and dainty songs, came the thin and scratchy calls of tschet, tschet, tschet.

“Is that what the calls are?” Ellen asked rhetorically. We all tried to imprint the calls in our heads, and walked farther into the shady forest of Canyon Section. Suddenly a small shadow darted to the left, 50 feet below us; the sharp-eyed Allison called out, “Wren!” We heard the tschet-tschet calls that accompanied this bird, but not everyone had a good look because the bird had already hidden itself behind a clump of Sword Ferns (Polystichum munitum). We trained our binoculars to the ferns, focusing our attention on any movement of the fronds that would be indicative of something taking cover there.

After a couple of minutes, the wren moved again, now bolting to the right and uphill. No sooner had it landed at a low shrub, it disappeared into the dense foliage. “I saw its barred tail; it’s a wren all right!” exclaimed Kitty. Again, this wren let out an urgent series of “tschet”s.

The tiny, yet feisty, bird continued its island-hopping maneuver, getting closer and closer to us via stands of undergrowth of the forest, tschetting all the time. “Did we disturb it,” Wen wondered aloud, “or is it checking us out?” By this time the Pacific Wren had become too close to look through binoculars, and it stopped vocalizing. We caught glimpses of a typical wren profile: cocked tail, plump body, and brown plumage. Soon it crossed the trail we were on, and vanished uphill. We looked at one another, amazed by our good luck, except for Ellen, the demanding naturalist who said, “but I didn’t see it through binoculars.”

Listen to the calls of Pacific Wren recorded in Redwood Regional Park.

Pacific Wren (Troglodytes pacificus) is the smallest wren in North America, sharing this title with Winter Wren (Troglodytes himalis) with whom it was conspecific formerly, but now separated. In the field, the two wrens are distinguished foremost by their songs and calls. 

The occurrence of Pacific Wren is usually labeled as uncommon in field guides. Similarly, in our Checklist of the Garden, its sightings spread over many months, but are never frequent. Also in the Checklist, most of the time its habitat is Unknown (= Heard Only). If birding generally consists of equal parts of listening and watching, in the case of Pacific Wren, we rely more heavily on our ears than our eyes to recognize its presence.

The best bet to find a Pacific Wren in the Garden is go to the back of Pacific Rain Forest Section, or walk along Wildcat Creek in Canyon Section. Prick up your ears, and wait for the quick-shifting phrases of its bubbly song, or its scolding-like calls of tschet. Then track the sound using your eyes, and with luck, you will find moving leaves and a flitting shape near the ground. With more luck, you will see a partial or even a complete form of a dark bird. With utmost luck, you will catch a clear image through your binoculars, and declare to the world, “Pacific Wren!”

See photos on iNaturalist of adult and young Pacific Wrens.

My favorite guide book description of Pacific Wren comes from American Bird Conservancy’s Field Guide All the Birds of North America (1997). On Key 104, a general statement under “Curved Bills” goes: “Wrens have big, energetic voices for their small size...They typically scold intruders furiously from the security of their thickets. Wrens are as inquisitive as they are bellicose, and bird calls or simple squeaking noises often coax them into view.” On Key 107, the entry of Winter Wren (at the time of its publication, Pacific Wren was a subspecies under Winter Wren) says: “Scarce; in cool dense undergrowth of conifers in summer, esp. along streams and in boreal bogs...Very vocal, active, but furtive, hard to see.” 

Don’t these words capture vividly and succinctly all the bird’s characteristics revealed in the narrative above?