Laura Erickson's For the Birds

The Winter Wren’s long, silver-threaded song is one of the most beautiful sounds of the north woods. The notes, delivered about half as rapidly as those of the closely related Pacific Wren, give the Winter Wren a tinkling quality while the faster notes of the other two give them a buzzier quality. I use the song of the Winter Wren as my ringtone.

When I started birding, the Winter, Pacific, and Eurasian Wrens were all considered the same species, Troglodytes troglodytes. The “type specimen” for Linnaeus’s original checklist was from Europe, so when the three species were “split” in 2008, the Eurasian Wren kept the original scientific name.

The ranges of many eastern birds extend, in the northern extremes, all the way to Alaska. For example, when I went to Alaska in 2022, the only Yellow-rumped Warblers I saw belonged to the Eastern subspecies (Myrtle Warbler), NOT the Western subspecies (Audubon’s Warbler). The Winter Wren’s current range extends into eastern British Columbia but not as far west as Alaska.

The song of the Eurasian Wren is a little more similar to the Winter than the Pacific Wren, so many ornithologists believe it was Winter Wren populations that crossed the Bering Strait to first colonize Asia and then Europe. But a flea associated with the Pacific Wren and not the Winter Wren, Dasypsyllus gallinulae, is associated with Eurasian Wrens, so other ornithologists believe it was Pacific Wrens who originally crossed into Eurasia. The birds refuse to discuss the situation. In 2022 when I visited Alaska, I didn’t see any wrens at all.