Photo by George Wall

You can look at a lot of birds and some may seem to you just little brown jobs (LBJs) and you can sometimes get mixed up as to what family the LBJ is in. But when you see a small brown bird with a stripped cocked tail, you can almost be sure it’s probably one of nine wrens in the United States. They are secretive little birds and many times you might only hear them and be forced to list them as a heard bird.

Description: Out of all the nine wrens, this is probably the most easily recognized. It has a pale grayish to belly, white breast, unmarked brown wings that distinguish it from all other wrens, a bold white eyebrow and the usual wren long stripped tail. All have long slender bills. Their long tail is often flicked.

Habitat and Nesting: Open woodland and shrub areas. They like to nest in natural cavities of upturned trees or in brush piles. They line their nests with leaves, twigs, feathers and grass. They lay around 5-6 eggs. The male will sometimes make many nests for the female to choose from.

Diet: They forage through thickets, brush and weeds for insects, spiders and seeds.

Range: They mainly live from British Columbia down into Mexico but mostly east of the Mississippi in the lower to west coast states.