The sound of a South Carolina bird sings in Conn.
Right now, the world is mostly white, black and gray.
The birds at my feeder are like that as well. Chickadees, juncos, titmice, nuthatches — as black, white and gray as Whistler’s mother. Now and then, there’s the red/ olive Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal to brighten the world, or the crimson patch on the back of a downy woodpecker’s head.
But, lucky me, I’ve also had a pair of Carolina wrens — small, round, bright cinnamon-brown birds with their tails straight up like signaling semaphores. Nothing could be finer.
They’re not a constant, year-after-year tenant here — they can be noshows for several winters, then return like a lucky copper penny. But this winter, the pennies are spilling out across the state.
“They’re everywhere,” said Margaret Robbins, owner of the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Brookfield of the plethora of Carolina wrens. “I’ve had a lot of customers coming in with photos or descriptions.”
“We had a record number in our Christmas Bird Count this year,’’ said Angela Dimmitt of New Milford. “I think they had a very successful breeding season.”
They’re also songsters. Even in winter, you can hear them trilling ‘teakettle, teakettle, teakettle” — a flute played over other birds’ chips and caws.
Ken Elkins, community conservation manager for Audubon Connecticut, said he was out early one December morning on River Road in Southbury, compiling his list for the annual Christmas Bird Count.
“It was dead quiet,” Elkins said. “Then I heard a Carolina wren singing. The sound really carried.”
“Someone called up here with a recording of a Carolina wren they made, asking for an ID,” said Cathy Hagadorn, executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society’s Deer Pond Farm nature center in Sherman.
The song was unmistakable.
“They’re little, but they’re mighty,” Hagadorn said.
As their name implies, Carolina wrens are also a Southern species — they’re the state bird of South Carolina.
But like cardinals and mockingbirds and redbellied woodpeckers, they
spread north here over the 20th century— especially in that century’s latter half.
Patrick Comins, executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society, said that a birder first sighted a Carolina wren in the state in 1874. The first nesting pair settled down in Bridgeport in 1895.
By now, their range is pushing into Vermont and New Hampshire.
“They were rare here at one point,” Comins said. “Now, they’re common.”
Birds can expand their ranges more easily if they’re generalists, who can adapt to different habitats and food.
Carolina wrens like scrubby, first-growth brush lots, a habitat that’s dwindling in Connecticut — we’ve either got mature
forests, suburbs or cities.
But Comins said Carolina wrens have learned to coexist with humans. They nest in tangles of vines and branches in corners of suburbia and in urban parks.
They may also be benefiting from winter feeders — fattening up on highprotein suet to get through cold days.
“I put meal worms out for them and oh my God, they’re in heaven,” said Robbins, of Wild Birds Unlimited. “They wait for me in the morning.”
All wrens are brown. Carolina wrens — with their ginger-brown backs, white eye streaks and buff breasts—are the brightest of the bunch.
They also have a wide assortment of vocalizations — variations in the ‘teakettle’ song, along with buzzes and chattering. They communicate in different ways.
“That means they’re probably very smart little birds,” Comins said.
They also have vivid personalities — not aggressive, but forthright.
“I love them,” said Hagadorn, of Deer Pond Farm.
To encourage Carolina wrens to hang around, Hagadorn said, it’s good to leave your yard a little messy. Insects can winter over is the uncut remains of a flower garden and Carolina wrens can rustle through, looking for food.
“Leave brush piles.” she said.
It’s unclear if climate change has hurried Carolina wrens north, Comins said. They began showing up here in the late 19th century, he said, so it’s more likely a case of simply expanding their range over the decades, with juvenile birds dispersing from the nest and pushing out into new places.
Most of the time this goes from south to north.
“I can only think of two species that have moved into the state from the north,” Comins said. “Yellow-bellied sapsuckers and common ravens.”
But in the future, a warming climate may push some Connecticut regulars north, while bringing other southern species into our state.
“We may be hearing birds singing ‘Y’all,’” Hagadorn said.