"Tuning In" - The King of All Birds

LBJs that should not really be here but … climate change

I had intended to end the 2023 with a round up of my year wildlifing - thereby clearing the decks for the year ahead with lengthy species lists that few would bother to read. So that’s off the table - I saw the light in time. Something better, perhaps, is required … let’s have a look at one of my favourite members of the famous 1001 Species in a bit of detail:

For the past few weeks the birds in the garden have been soundly told what to do by a small and very feisty bird that, were it not for global warming, would never have crossed the border into Canada. It has become a great favourite in this household. First though, a message for nature loving readers who are not “Naturalists” (yet). This is taken from Melissa Harrison’s “The Stubborn Light of Things” - Faber & Faber 2020:

The Hawk in the bush may have been hard to miss, but a few years back I'd never have been able to identify it; in fact, I wouldn't even have registered that there was an unfamiliar bird nearby. It's easy to think that people who know about birds are a separate species themselves: fleece-clad, hung about with binoculars and cameras, and brandishing their life lists'. But like anything, learning about birds is a process - one it's never too late to embark on. Apps make it easy to keep an ID guide on you; simple curiosity does the rest. I started small, with the birds in my garden; slowly, more and more species swam out of anonymity into sharp focus, along with their behaviour, their yearly schedules, their songs and calls. The reason I even turned to look at the raptor overhead was that my brain no longer relegates bird calls to background noise.

This is a change anyone can make.

Why would you want to, though - why make room, when there are so many other things claiming our time? Because the things we choose to look at in life loom large, changing the version of reality we live in, whether it's cars or fashion or the natural world. Knowing one bird from another tells me how many different species are around me, populating my urban world with their lives; learning about trees has made my city seem greener, because my eye no longer passes over them as though they were hardly there.

If you live in a city and miss 'nature', the answer doesn't have to be to move out; it's to tune in.

Now, here is a lovely bird that is now commoner than it should be around here and one that is becoming easier to see … and add to your life-list. You will probably find it by its loud song before seeing it. It’s a Wren, and my, do they like to use their voices

The Carolina Wren ( Thryothorus ludovicianus)

You may well laugh, but I am going to suggest that these splendid little birds can be described as “glamorous”. A touch of hyperbole for a brown handful of fluff, perhaps, but then the word glamour comes from “glamer”, which in early 18th-century Scots meant “a magic spell” and Carolina Wrens most certainly offer that. What better birds with which to start a new year of journaling.

In the not so distant past, as the climate has been gradually changing and average winter temperatures have increased, there has been an extension northwards in the range of several species of birds that were previously confined to the south of us. I have wondered how they actually got here and so made use of the mapping tools of the eBird database to attempt to determine their arrival route in the Montreal. Supportive information was drawn from the Quebec Breeding Bird Atlas project as well as a number of other sources. Reasonable inferences have been drawn as to the probable route or routes used by birds to reach Montreal from the south and the rate of their local expansion.

The Carolina Wren is described on the Cornell website thus: “ ... creeps around vegetated areas and scoots up and down tree trunks in search of insects and fruit. It explores yards, garages, and woodpiles, sometimes nesting there. Carolina Wrens defend their territories with constant singing; they aggressively scold and chase of intruders ... singing or calling from dense vegetation in wooded areas, especially in forest ravines and neighbourhoods. Move low through tangled understory; they frequent backyard brush piles and areas choked with vines and bushes.”

Prior to 1990, these wrens lived to the south of the US border. Occasionally and rarely individual birds had been seen further north, with only three recorded instances near Montreal in 1986 (Pierrefonds), 1987 (downtown) and 1979 (Laval). The closest reports otherwise were all south of the border. In 1986 to 1989 along the eastern shore of Lac Champlain in the Ferrisburg and Burlington area where they probably represented solitary birds, rather than established populations. We saw our first birds a decade ago or there about when once or twice each winter we would see one grubbing about in the snow for seeds thrown down from the feeders by established residents. The Wrens are essentially ground feeders and so, despite being able to handle the cold so long as there is some shelter, they starve when the snow is deep … unless there are feeders available. So we would see a bird or two every second year but it seems some managed to become established as recently their numbers have increased. Twice they have nested and raised young in the garden. Last winter we certainly had two (there are photos) and this year it looks like one, or a pair, have settled in for the long haul. It’s a delight.

Remember that the further back in time we go, there were fewer numbers of reports in the eBird database as fewer people had made their sightings available and it is wise to assume that more birds were around and were possibly seen in earlier years but did not make it into the accessible records. Nevertheless, a picture of changing distribution with an expansion of range northwards from a seed population in the Lac Champlain area of the US. That they moved thence, up the Richelieu valley towards the St-Lawrence and Montreal becomes evident when the records are considered chronologically.

Breaking down the sightings into five year periods from 1990 I believe that the ancestors of the Carolina Wrens now in the Montreal area probably started to arrive here starting around 2005. I put together a series of distribution maps at five year intervals for this species based on reports of bird sightings at eBird and will be pleased to share them with anyone interested, but I don’t want to overburden this page.

Suffice it to say that looking at these year by year distribution maps and knowing what we do about the habitat requirements of this species and its propensity not to wander very far from its hatching territory, it is safe to infer that the route of movement into the Montreal area was initially northwards from Lac Champlain, along the Richelieu valley towards Chambly. Thence westwards along the southern shore of the St-Lawrence. Some birds crossed the river by relatively short routes, perhaps at Parc-des-Rapide in Lasalle or via Ile-des-Soeurs and moved onto “the Mountain” in Montreal. Other individuals spread year by year along the southern shore of Lac-St-Louis via Chateauguay towards Beauharnois and then across the river onto Ile Perrot and finally on to the western tip of Montreal island in the direction of Senneville and then Baie'd'Urfé and Beaconsfeld, establishing themselves in a well treed suburban area with plenty of garden feeders. From there the route of expansion took birds north along the still open green corridor from the west island to Ile-Bizard, Laval, St-Thérese and Boisbriand where their main limit currently lies.

The hypothesised routes are shown on the following map for the period up to 2013 (ten years ago). Note that they do not like to cross large bodies of open water, hence the circular route to the west.

So, today …

Here are the 2023 records on eBird of sightings of Carolina Wrens. These little birds have adapted to local winter conditions remarkably well. A decade ago I would never have expected so many to be alongside us. Contrast the number of 2023 sightings in the map below with that above. Only ten years separates them.

Not many birds sing in winter but our Wrens (and, come to that, pretty well all the other species of Wrens worldwide), really like to belt it out. As I write this, there are a couple of Carolina Wrens who visit our garden daily and sing their hearts out to tell the world that all the food here about belongs to him/her/them. And why not - this is a Wren after all and that’s what Wrens do. Lords of all they survey. Not a male/female pair, as it’s only the male Carolina Wrens that sing in a three-parted call, usually transliterated as a repeated *teakettle*. Each male has a repertoire of up to several dozen different song variations which are sung perhaps 15 times before changing his tune.

In British/Irish folklore, the wren is named as the “King of all the Birds”, a name that goes as far into distant history. My, don’t they try to live up to the title.

“The challenge was that the bird who could fly the highest in the air was to be recognised as King. The others agreed. All got ready & just as the eagle started off the wren perched on its tail unkonwn to the eagle. The eagle flew upwards & upwards until it could go no further. By this time the other birds were far below the eagle & so exhausted that they could go no further. When the eagle saw the others so far below he cried out in truimph that he had won & that he was King. Just then the wren started her short flight above the eagle & to the eagle's astonishment he heard the wren answer that it was he and not the eagle who was King. The eagle was beaten & humbly acknowleged the wren's supremacy & from that day to this the wren is King of all birds”

Collected from John Sweeney, Dunkitt, Co. Kilkenny

Twice now, Carolina Wrens, have raised young in our garden … this nest was in a hanging flower pot just two feet from my front door a couple of years ago. Total lack of concern about our coming and going, the post arriving or all the other inevitable and unavoidable disturbances naturally occurring around a front door. Very kingly behaviour.

Our area has two other species of wrens - the House Wren and the Winter Wren but they are, perhaps sensibly, not here in winter. The Winter Wren (Troglodytes hiemalis) was not long ago considered to be the same species as the Eurasian Wren (Troglodytes Troglodytes), the original “King” but taxonomically they have now been split.

And now 2024 is upon us. What tales will there be to share in the year ahead?

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Wild Gardening

I shall be returning to this theme before too long - meanwhile:

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Christmas week - frozen pond, but rather unusually, no snow.