Lifer Wren

While teaching my Digital Nature Photography camp today I took the kids to a spot where we'd been earlier in the week. One of the girl's camera batteries had died right when we got there last time so she really wanted to go back. Boy am I glad we did.

While the kids hunted around for flowers and dragonflies, a sound caught my ear. A bird was calling from within some tall grasses near a large pond but I couldn't see anything. It seemed to call with no regard to the kids. I could tell it was close so I stepped off the trail and into the grass to see if I could make anything out. There was nothing but the calling of the bird. I walked a little further in and suddenly a bird flushed up out of the grass about ten feet from me. I only caught a glimpse as it immediately popped back down into the grasses further away and resumed singing. I knew this was not a song I had heard before. It started with two notes and then ended with a faster trill of sorts. I tried to commit it to memory before rounding up the kids for lunch.

Back at the nature center I listened to a few guesses online at lunch. None were a match. I then tried another guess. I played the call of the Sedge Wren. Bingo. That was it! "Wait a minute," I thought. When I was in this same spot on Tuesday with the kids I saw a small wren in a shrub just a few feet from where this bird had been. I'd been too busy this week to go back and look at my photos. I scrolled back through the photos and sure enough, the bird I'd photographed at the beginning of the week was a Sedge Wren! It was fun to get photos since they usually spend most of their time hiding in grass. This was the first sedge wren I've ever seen so that made it even more fun.




~Kirk