June 18 2012. I spent the early daylight hours of today in an old-growth forest preserve near Lake Erie helping a university undergraduate with a research project. My job was to do point counts which are a widely used technique for research into bird populations. The point counter’s task is to identify and record all birds seen or heard within a 100M radius and within a limited time period (usually ten minutes). It can be quite a mental workout to listen, focus, separate one call from another and identify the species. While few birds are visible now that the trees are fully leafed, out many are actively singing to mark the limits of their breeding territories. Different species’ territories overlap without conflict so there can easily be several different birds close at hand and all singing at once. Interestingly when I step away from the point count site some songs are quickly absorbed by the forest while others ring loud and clear and carry a long way.
I had four different point counts to do, two at each station. The list of birds at the first station included the clear songs of: Black-throated Green Warbler, Wood Thrush, Veery, Scarlet Tanager and Ovenbird. But there were many distant fragments, many part songs, clucks and chips. I was able to clinch a Pine Warbler after a while but could not be sure whether a few soft ‘pips’ belonged to an Acadian Flycatcher; then far off I caught the tight tangle of high pitched trills of a Winter Wren. I strained, blocking out everything else until I heard it again and then yet again, a little louder each time.
Winter Wrens are among my favourite birds. As simply the Wren they were familiar to me in my English childhood, I admired them as small busybodies who would appear and disappear like a mouse. The male builds compact domed nests which we would occaisionally find, sometimes in a crevice among the mass of roots of an upturned tree, in a stream bank or perhaps the corner of an old shed. The male Winter Wren builds several nests, each tucked carefully and tidily into a compact hiding space and when complete the female is offered her pick from a range of desirable residences.
Until fairly recently Europe’s Wren was considered to be the same species as America’s Winter Wren, both Troglodytes troglodytes; an amusingly Tolkienesque name. But recent study has led to some splitting of the species; so from T. troglodytes has come T. hiemalis (Winter Wren) and T.pacificus (Pacific Wren); and perhaps more to follow.
At our second station, where we also found a Common Yellowthroat and a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers, a Winter Wren, probably the same bird, came close to us and singing at intervals as he checked his fences lines. I caught sight of him eyeing us cautiously, evidently our point-count site intruded into his territory and with his assertive songs he made sure we knew it. Winter Wrens are usually considered to nest farther north spreading well into the boreal forest zone, so seeing and hearing one today was both notable and welcome.