August 8, 2007

RIVER WATCHER

JENNY WREN

Rex Burress

If you are down by the riverside, and see a small thin-beaked brownish bird poking around in low bushes, bark crevices, or under rocks, chances are it is Jenny Wren looking for insects and spiders.

"Jenny" may be a house wren, Bewick's wren, or around the rocks of Fish Barrier Dam, a rock wren. Jenny is the fond name story-writer Thornton Burgess gave to the wren in his "Peter Rabbit Bedtime Stories," and most generally he applied it to the house wren, a summer resident to all of America, and some stay the year around along the Feather River. All told, there are ten species of wrens in North America, six in Butte County, and 49 in South America! They are birds of the Western Hemisphere, with only one, the winter wren, being found in Europe.

A pair of Jenny house wrens nested in a tree-hole near the Feather River Nature Center this spring, a secretive, hidden home except for the frequent trips when feeding the babes. I only got an occasional glimpse of their homelife and never did see the fledglings leave the nest. They were pleasantly vocal in the spring and become rather solitaire after the nesting gathering, each relentlessly gleaning the thickets for insects.

In my Missouri homeland, house wrens would migrate south in the winter and return to the backyard bird house in the spring, the male arriving first to build a new nest, singing constantly while waiting for the lady to finally arrive and either accept or reject his handiwork! No wonder Burgess chose Jenny as a feature of his animal tales. Wrens are loveable in the Midwest because of their reappearance in the springtime and their song.

In his dialogue between Peter and Jenny, Burgess stressed the importance of a bird going to find food wherever it may be. "If you were so fond of the Old Orchard, why did you leave it and go south?" Peter asked. Jenny snapped, "What would you eat if there was nothing to eat? In the winter there is no food here that we can eat. Do give us birds credit for a little common sense, Peter." Thus those stories are interwoven with a nature fact spoken by the anthropomorphic animal actors, a way to create a favorable impression of compassion for the wild denizens. Bewick's wren is more common in the brushy hillsides than along the river, but once in a while you will see this handsome bird, somewhat larger than a house wren, and with a noticeable white stripe over the eye. It was the bird discovered by John James Audubon and given the Bewick name to honor the famous wood block artist of England.

The marvelous thing about birds is that each species is fitted to feed and occupy a certain niche in the environment. You can tell many of their modes by their beak. The wrens have that long slender beak to slip into shady nooks for small insects. Woodpeckers, of course, have stout beaks for pounding, just as the jays have coarse bills for feeding on a variety of foods. Sparrows have seed crackers, herons are fish stabbers, hawks are meat tearers, and etc. You know them by their feet, too. Perching songbirds, scratching towhees, paddles for ducks, meat-clutching talons for birds of prey. Know them by their tools!

"Be very slow to say you know.

Say merely that you think it's so."

-Old Mother Nature in Peter Rabbit Tales