Pacific Wren

For most of my birding career, ornithologists considered Pacific, Winter and European wrens to be a single species. These populations, however, prove to sing distinct songs and have significant differences in their genes. Where Pacific and Winter wrens overlap, they do not interbreed. Pacific Wrens breed along the coasts of southern Alaska and the coasts and western mountains of Canada and the United States. Isolated populations breed in South Dakota, Utah, and Arizona.

Pacific Wrens, although common in Washington, are cryptic and elusive. These tiny wrens skulk about forest undergrowth and prefer old-growth habitat. In the Pacific Northwest, they are often found along streams enriched with “salmon-derived nutrients” (Toews and Irwin 2012). Clear-cutting and other forest fragmentation pose threats to these wrens. I have, nevertheless, seen several Pacific Wrens in our Olympia backyard. This image is my first of these wrens I’ve banded—on 21 November 2019.