I can’t say that I have been too busy to blog since March 28 (Ice Out). Busy isn’t really part of my vocabulary any longer, but neither have I been a troglodyte (speaking of vocabulary). Troglodyte is not usually a complimentary descriptor for humans - meaning one who lives in a cave, is out of touch with reality, and maybe even brutish. After a year (no ordinary year!) and nearly 50 blog posts, I have simply been resting in a narrative and photographic sense, waiting for inspiration. Well, to quote Billy Collins, “this morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren.” A house wren. So, here we go…
By odd linguistic coincidence, house wrens are known in the world of scientific nomenclature as Troglodytes aedon - a hefty name tag for such a tiny and, depending on whether you anthropomorphize bird behavior, not brutish songbird! In this case, troglodyte pertains to living and foraging for food in small cave-like spaces. You can read about the aedon part yourselves. Suffice it to say that it involves one or possibly two long and complicated Greek myths with lots
of jealousy, revenge, and general celestial tomfoolery in which Aedon is eventually turned into a nightingale and most of her family into other avian creatures.
Possibly the nightingale song is the source of the choice of aedon for the house wren’s species name. Because part of what captured my “aimless love” this morning was the effervescent, lilting, and repetitive song of this little bird - not really loud, but nevertheless audible everywhere. The hours wrens are singing constantly in our yard, usually from atop one of the little houses along the rear boundary. This happy chorus is a nesting celebration and maybe a warning to possible intruders. The songs will completely disappear when nesting is over.
House wrens may have the largest range of any songbird in the Western Hemisphere. They are found from central Canada to the southern tip of South America. Here in northern New England, wrens return in late April from winter sojourns in the southern United States and Mexico.
I don’t believe in the notion of “bad” birds though there are some birds whose behaviors some humans find disreputable. (See my previous blog on bad birds). House wrens are sometimes characterized in this way because of the feisty protective actions of male house wrens and, more seriously, because house wrens may disrupt the nesting and even kill the nestlings of blue birds, swallows, chickadees, and other “good” birds.
Here’s the rest of Billy Collin’s poem recited by the poet. It’s not really about wrens, but about the abundant and undemanding beauty around us in which my house wren simply resides. (Not to be confused with, but similar in sentiment to, John Prine’s song of the same name).