On the title page of “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau sets the tone for his book with this pronouncement: “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.” “Chanticleer” is an old literary name for the rooster. Chaucer uses it in his rollicking “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.”
And in likening himself to a boisterous barnyard cock, Thoreau, with a touch of humor, lets his reader know that he’s going to be “chanting clear” the wake-up news he has learned about man and nature while living in his cabin beside Walden Pond. I like to think that if Thoreau had lived in a cabin up Moses Creek, he’d have chosen a different bird for his chanticleer.
Journal entry, March 24: “A pile of brown leaves on the edge of the yard erupts, with leaves shooting into the air. Looking through binoculars, I see the volcanic cause — a small, chunky, buff-and-cinnamon-colored bird with a short cocked-up tail, and with a white stripe over each eye. The stripes converge at the sharp beak to form a ‘V,’ giving the bird a piercing look. It’s one of the mated pair of Carolina wrens that live in our yard, and it’s flipping leaves out of the way in search for insects to eat. It must also be the male. I hear another sing male in the distance, and this one flies to a branch. His head goes up, his tail goes down, and — with his little throat pumping away — out comes loud and clear, ‘I’m here! I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!’ His song is both an assurance to his mate and, to the other male, a vigorous Keep Out.”
What a big sound a Carolina wren makes, considering that underneath its puff of feathers and fluff it has a body no bigger than the tip of your little finger! If we compare its diminutive body to the volume level of its song, the wren beats any chicken coop rooster in magnitude of sound. And what stamina! Ornithologists say that male wrens sing up to 3,000 times a day.
Our particular wren has also learned how to amplify his voice. One of his favorite perches is on top of a ladder that leans against the house. And when he cuts loose there, the metal roof becomes his sounding board. It makes my hearing aids rattle.
Carolina wrens mate for life, and this male and his mate have been the epitome of bird busyness and sound in our yard for years. Nothing natural or human escapes their black eyes, and in spring what they look for is nesting sites. They can raise two or even three broods during the warm season, each brood requiring a fresh, new nest. We’ve found them nesting inside the clothespin bag on the line, in a tool bin beside the back door, in one of the pots in Becky’s garden shed. But their favorite spot is in my Mad River Guide canoe. I’ve got seven canoes stored under a shelter, remnants of my years as an outfitter and guide, but for the wrens, just like for me, the Guide is the go-to boat.
The wrens are in the Guide as much as I am, but unlike me, they like it upside down. I keep the canoe stored with its gunwales resting on a rack, and in wren eyes the upside-down canoe forms two perfect A-frame birdhouses where its sides come together to make the bow and stern. The deck plates are the floors. If I’ve got a canoe trip in mind but forget to stuff wads of newspaper in both ends of the Guide, before I know it, the wrens will have stuffed one with a nest of soft green moss, dry leaves, twigs and small strips of red cedar bark. I swear, they can build the nest one morning and the female will fill it with eggs before night. Even if I beat them to the spot, sometimes they’ll pull the newspaper back out. The wrens seem to know that if they can lay the eggs quick, then the canoe is theirs by a higher right than mine — to fill Moses Creek with still more Carolina wrens. And if I venture close, they let me know it with a tail-up scolding. To draw on Robert Frost:
My right might be love but theirs is need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs is the better right—agreed.
I have to settle for another canoe.
In mid-April of this year, however, I noticed that the dawn chorus of birds around the house was missing its distinctive tenor. The avian orchestra played without a trumpet. It was the pulsing cardinal that I heard first now. Or the wood thrush with his flute. I told Becky that our “Wake Up!” bird, our insistent alarm cock, was strangely silent. That very afternoon when she went to her garden shed, Becky found the wren’s body lying on the ground. It showed no sign of trauma. Had he sung and sung and sung all these years until his heart burst?
I buried the wren in the pet cemetery between Henry’s dog and cat. The burial place is marked with a sign that I found lodged in flood debris while canoeing in eastern North Carolina. It says, “On River.” The digging did not take me long. Humans require six feet to rest in peace, but a wren needs just six inches. I placed a handful of dry leaves in the hole, laid the bird on them, covered him with more leaves, and pulled the cool, moist dirt over all. I wondered if the cat’s ghost, sensing a bird near, had pricked up its ears.
A male wren singing. Tim Carstens photo
The female of the pair now found herself alone in a suddenly quiet yard. Becky called her “The Widow Wren.” No singing knight in shining feathers came immediately to the rescue, though we’ve read that prime territory and a female will draw a knight. Then, one dawn in late April, Becky woke me: “Put in your ears!”
She heard a wren singing! Later that afternoon, after seeing the two birds splashing together in the birdbath, Becky renamed the female “The Merry Widow.”
Now well into May, the newly arrived male has yet to match our singer of old. And he tends to stay behind the canoe shelter. Maybe he feels our old chanticleer’s presence lingering in the yard. He is the former wren’s equal in one way, however. A few days after he appeared, I found the first mossy nest of the breeding season in the bow of my Guide.
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County.)