Wrens are among the smallest songbirds, yet they make their presence known in a big way. They are both loud and persistent singers.
Birds use song, in part, to announce their breeding territories. House wrens aggressively defend their territories, often driving away much larger birds, and even mammals!
Wrens are energetic brown birds, smaller than sparrows, with slender, slightly curved beaks. Wrens pose with their tails cocked in an upright position. This distinctive posture makes wrens easy to identify. The most common backyard wren is the house wren. Its voice is a bubbling, gurgling song, rising in a musical burst, and falling at the end. The melodious song is familiar around many homes and gardens. The house wren’s more southern cousin, the Carolina wren, is also common in some neighborhoods. The Bewick’s wren also nests in yards and farmsteads.
You can attract wrens to backyard birdhouses, but they sometimes seem to prefer unusual places to build nests. Wrens have been found nesting in old coffee cans, baskets, hats, shoes, and even in the pocket of a pair of overalls hanging on a line.
You can place a wren house near your garden for natural control of many garden insect pests.
Build Your Own Wren House
This house may be top-mounted, back-mounted or hung from a limb or porch. If it is to be back-mounted on a post or tree, the back should be 8 inches long–or you can nail a longer board to the back later to provide for back-mounting.
As a substitute for eye screws, you can drill holes through the opposite edges of the roof boards and tie your wire there. Fasten the bottom in place with screws so that it can be removed to clean the box. The sides that fit under the roof can be beveled, but this is not necessary. A square cut works just as well. The 1 1/8-inch hole will keep out sparrows and larger birds.
Installation
- Mount or hang the house 6 to 10 feet high in or near a tree or shrub. House wrens seem to prefer areas with trees and shrubs. Fencerows and brushy draws are ideal. Bewick wrens seem to prefer more open countryside and frequent farmsteads more than urban lots.
- It pays to put up two or three wren houses in a back yard. The houses may be 20 to 50 feet apart. Males sometimes attract two females to use extra houses. They seldom build second or third nests in the same house in the same year; they move to one of the vacant houses instead.
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