Photographed by Bette Jackson



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Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. The Carolina wren is a master songster with a loud and varied repertoire of whistles, trills, and buzzes. As with other birds, it uses song to defend its territory, attract a mate and to coordinate activities between the pair. The Carolina wren is also a mimic, a lesson I learned the hard way. I once recruited a group of students to help me search several square miles of dense forests for nest trees of the endangered red-concaded woodpecker. The plan was that we would walk through the forest in a line, spaced about 150 feet apart. The undergrowth was so dense that we couldn't see one another, so I provided each student with a referee's whistle and we developed a code we would use: one blast on the whistle meant “Here I am, where are you?”, two blasts meant “Wait, I’m stopping to check something”, three meant “I found something, come here”. It was a great plan, but I hadn't considered the Carolina wrens. What I hadn't realized was that Carolina wrens can mimic a referee's whistle, and they did. Within an hour, my students were hopelessly scattered, following the signals of several Carolina wrens. I've often wondered if they were as confused as we were.