A year with Carolina Wrens
Last winter, a bright spot in my day was watching a mated pair of Carolina Wrens fly in at dusk to roost on our porch. They had discovered the rusty can I hung the summer before to hold citronella candles, and after adding a bed of dried leaf skeletons, they moved in. Each evening just before dark, the male would appear. Except on the coldest nights, he sang a few bars of his chirily-chirily-chirily song before zipping into the can, followed by his mate.
It was comforting to know that something as simple as providing the pair a safe, dry place to spend the night helped them survive the brutally cold nights we can get in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia.
Carolina Wrens form lifelong pair bonds and stay together all year, defending a home territory of 1 to 15 acres, mainly against other wrens. In urban areas, their territory can be as small as a backyard. These adaptable birds are common in open woods, overgrown farmland, and brushy suburban backyards in the eastern half of the United States, extreme southern Ontario, and northeastern Mexico, where they busily explore the underbrush and leaf litter for insects.
