Photographed by Bette Jackson



If you are have difficulty playing the audio click here

Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. The Carolina wren is a tiny bird about the size of a sparrow. It has a distinctive rusty back, long rusty black- barred tail that it often holds cocked upwards, a pale rusty breast, and a striking white line above each eye. Like all of our wrens, the Carolina wren is a busy searcher of hidden places, living up to the family name of wrens: Troglodytidae, meaning cave dweller. The Carolina wren readily enters dark places such as tree hollows, caves, the ends of pipes, garages, and even open windows to probe into cracks and crevices in buildings, trees and elsewhere in search of insects and spiders. Carolina wrens are not high flyers, they rarely rise more than a few feet above the ground, and they are local residents, staying close to home and maintaining a pair-bond year round. Although Carolina wrens can be found throughout the eastern United States and into Southern Canada, they're most common in the southeast, and their numbers are often greatly reduced in northern areas due to winter weather.