General, Non-Daffodil

Canyon Wren/ Irish Wren

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Thanks Melissa,
Your Canyon Wren looks very similar to our little guy that I was brought uo to call a Chitty Wren. We have them in the garden all the time and they even come into the bulb shed looking for spiders etc. We usually find a few nests in the springtime. I find it intetresting that such similar birds are to be found sp many miles apart with an ocean between!
Brian

2 comments for “Canyon Wren/ Irish Wren”


  1. Brian,
    We have several types of wrens here in the US.  The Canyon Wren has quite a different song, no eye line, a more clear white throat, and is found in quite distinct habitat to the Bewick’s wren, winter wren, and house wren.  Probably our House Wren is most similar to the Chitty Wren you show.  But for sure, they have strong family resemblance among all of them, with their little raised tails, slender beaks, and song style.

    http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek031101.html
    is a very charming essay on the Winter Wren, with excellent photographs.

    http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canyon_Wren/id
    Here’s the Cornell Ornithology Lab page on the Canyon wren, with song

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Wren
    Here’s something on house wrens (tho the Cornell site has all of them to peruse also)

    http://www.seattleaudubon.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=339
    Here’s the Bewick’s wren

    and finally
    http://www.bird-friends.com/BirdPage.php?name=Rock%20Wren
    Here’s a page on the Rock Wren.

    It is always a treat for me to see a wren, and I’ve enjoyed the occasions when you’ve posted the wren photos from your shed.  I think we may have even seen one of your little friends when we were there for the World Convention.  I’d love to have wrens in my yard, but am settling at the moment for a flock of about 20 lesser goldfinches, a black phoebe, and several hummingbirds.  The goldfinches really enjoy the seedheads from the Rudbeckia Goldsturm (Black Eyed Susan), so I haven’t been able to bring myself to deadhead yet.

    While I’m getting wound up here, and your comment concerned related species across distance, I’ll mention what a treat it was when we went to the far south of Chilean Patagonia, to see plants that I could recognize to genus, though not to species, as they were such close relatives of the boreal plants of the north.  Similarly the birds;  they’d be a different species but with similar habits and even songs to their northern counterparts.

    Melissa

      At 09:29 AM 9/11/2009, Brian S. Duncan wrote:

    Thanks Melissa,
    Your Canyon Wren looks very similar to our little guy that I was brought uo to call a Chitty Wren. We have them in the garden all the time and they even come into the bulb shed looking for spiders etc. We usually find a few nests in the springtime. I find it intetresting that such similar birds are to be found sp many miles apart with an ocean between!
    Brian


     

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