WrensEurasian WrenTroglodytes troglodytes
- ORDER: Passeriformes
- FAMILY: Troglodytidae
Basic Description
The Eurasian Wren is a mousy little bird of backyard gardens, but it is also an avian dynamo that can survive above treeline in the Alps and has colonized remote North Atlantic islands. This tiny species delivers an amazingly loud song for its size, weaving together whistles and trills at breakneck speed. Eurasian Wren is most at home in woodlands with dense undergrowth, where it scurries along the ground or in low vegetation looking for invertebrate prey. It has the distinction of being the only wren found outside of the Americas.
More ID InfoOther Names
- Chochín Paleártico (Spanish)
- Troglodyte mignon (French)
- Cool Facts
- Eurasian Wren and two North American species—Pacific Wren and Winter Wren—were all considered to be a single species up until 2010. Ornithologists split that single species, whose range spanned nearly all of northern Eurasia and North America, into three species based on vocal and genetic differences.
- Eurasian Wrens are familiar garden birds in much of Europe, but they live a more extreme lifestyle in other parts of their range. This species—which weighs about the same as a AAA battery—breeds above treeline in the Swiss Alps, occurs up to 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) in the High Atlas of Morocco, and has been recorded as high as 4,575 meters (15,000 feet) in the Himalayas.
- Eurasian Wrens are resourceful foragers. During winters in southern Norway, with only six hours of daylight to work with, Eurasian Wrens sometimes take advantage of streetlights to begin foraging several hours before sunrise.
- The wren family (Troglodytidae) consists of 86 species, but Eurasian Wren is the only one to occur in Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Australia and Antarctica have no wrens at all.) Most wren species occur in the tropics of Central and South America.