6:22 a.m. (sunrise six minutes earlier than Friday, April 2). 41 degrees, wind NNW 13 mph; a world in motion, the clacking of naked limbs, the swishing of pine boughs; even a few thin, bone-dry beech leaves, once tenacious, let loose, drifting around like scraps of paper in the gutter of the woods. Sky: blue, white, and gray; truancy of warm colors. Feels like rain, looks like rain. Permanent streams: upper, musical arrangement enhanced by winter wren, sings from an overhanging hemlock branch, screened by needles, little bird, big sonata, buoys a gray morning, a cascade effervescent notes. The sound of rushing water fades into the background, a mere accompaniment of an effusive piccolo; Lower, loud, babbling flow without wren accessories. Wetlands: ice-free and quiet; two geese fly east, raining honks; flapless, wings stretched and curved downward, a tilting glide like paper airplanes. Geese descending in preparation to land somewhere close by. One of the three ridgeline ponds? The Connecticut River? Pond: opening again, recent ice on recent water cellophane-thin. Second pair of geese, honking and flapping, head south. Bolt upright, stubborn robin stalks bank; finds nothing—the tip of its yellow bill stained brown from fruitless probes. Dogs ignore robin, focus instead on shape-changing air along the underbelly of ice. Beneath the blustery sky . . . something for everyone.
Winter wren was recently split into three species. One across boreal Canada and in the Appalachians (winter wren, retains name); a second along the west coast, in giant evergreens, damp and shaded, from the Aleutian Islands almost to Baja (Pacific wren); a third in the evergreens of Europe and Asia (Eurasian wren).
Superlatives do not do winter wrens justice as a songster—a run of loud, sweet notes, up to ten seconds of exuberant warbles and trills. One ornithologist claimed that per unit weight, the winter wren's song has ten times the power of a crowing rooster. Sibley called the song a remarkable series, and Donald Kroodsma, birdsong guru from the University of Massachusetts, declared the winter wren the pinnacle of complexity among songbirds. Arthur Cleveland Bent, the author of the 21-volume Life Histories of North American Birds (published between 1919 and 1968), barely found enough adjectives to describe the winter wren's song: wonderful . . . charming . . . marvelous . . . startling . . . entrancing . . . copious . . . prolonged . . . penetrating. Wrote Bent, the winter wren has a great variety of the sweetest tones, and uttered in a rising and falling of finely undulated melody . . . as if the very atmosphere became resonant . . . [a] gushing melody which seems at once expressive of the wildest joy and the tenderest sadness. Another ornithologist noted that they sing as though trying to burst [their] lungs.
The winter wren is back, the four-inch songbird with the ten-foot song—loud enough to be appreciated above a spring freshet and a heavy wind. A tiny bird, a bubbly, outsized voice, enriches a dim sunrise. Even diminishes an enthusiastic robin.
I first encountered a winter wren on Monhegan Island many years ago. I was enchanted by the song, broadcast from high up in the trees. Hoping to identify who had song it, I hiked back to where I heard it several times and spent quite a while searching for the little songster. On my last morning on the island, I finally laid eyes upon the bird as it came down to the forest floor. Thank you for your tribute to it.
Here's the ten foot song for those like me who can't see this wee bird in person :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw-NqhxwGWQ