To let off some of his superfluous vivacity, Nature has provided him with two safety-valves: one is his voice, another is his tail. With the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive that it seems to be a certain index to what is passing in his busy little brain—drooping it, after the habit of the catbird, when he becomes limp with the emotion of his love-song, or holding it erect as, alert and inquisitive, he peers at the impudent intruder in the thicket below his perch.
But it is his joyous, melodious, bubbling song that is his chief fascination. He has so great a variety of strains that many people have thought that he learned them from other birds, and so have called him what many ornithologists declare that he is not—a mocking wren. And he is one of the few birds that sing at night—not in his sleep or only by moonlight, but even in the total darkness, just before dawn, he gives us the same wide-awake song that entrances us by day.
Winter Wren
(Troglodytes hiemalis) Wren family
Length—4 to 4.5 inches. About one-third smaller than the English sparrow. Apparently only half the size.
Male and Female—Cinnamon-brown above, with numerous short, dusky bars. Head and neck without markings. Underneath rusty, dimly and finely barred with dark brown. Tail short.
Range—United States, east and west, and from North Carolina to the Fur Countries.
Migrations—October, April. Summer resident. Commonly a winter resident in the South and Middle States only.
It all too rarely happens that we see this tiny mouse-like wren in summer, unless we come upon him suddenly and overtake him unawares as he creeps shyly over the mossy logs or runs literally "like a flash" under the fern and through the tangled underbrush of the deep, cool woods. His presence there is far more likely to be detected by the ear than the eye.
Throughout the nesting season music fairly pours from his tiny throat; it bubbles up like champagne; it gushes forth in a lyrical torrent and overflows into every nook of the forest, that seems entirely pervaded by his song. While music is everywhere, it apparently comes from no particular point, and, search as you may, the tiny singer still eludes, exasperates, and yet entrances.
If by accident you discover him balancing on a swaying twig, never far from the ground, with his comical little tail erect, or more likely pointing towards his head, what a pert, saucy minstrel he is! You are lost in amazement that so much music could come from a throat so tiny.