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Though my house is within territorial striking distance, and though my property hosts some pretty nifty chaparral bird species, I will never see a Wrentit in my yard. They need what is in the canyon, not what grows in established pseudo-feral suburban gardens, even ones like ours where we are working to establish native plants. One of their favorite tangles to reside in, and whose \ufb02eshy drupes sustain them through winter when there are fewer fruits, insects, and spiders to glean, is poison oak. Maybe someday. This year, I can hear them as I walk my dog near the canyon in the afternoons, but I never see them. Their simple bouncing ball of a song has many practical uses in their lives, and has very few variations, but it is certainly loud. Both sexes sing. It is the \ufb01rst bird song I learned as a child.
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Last week I scored a reservation to hike in the canyon. It\u2019s not quite time yet for Wrentits to breed, but they sing year long, stay monogamous (even roosting together in little family \ufb02u\ufb00 mounds), and can be in the same general territory for up to 12 years. I\u2019m sure the average is much lower than that, but still. It has only been a little over a year since I last saw them there. I headed straight to where I had last seen them, at the edge of the wash, and was startled by a loud song almost immediately. There really aren\u2019t the hordes of people in the canyon any more to inure them to us, and I had provoked one into giving a territorial proclamation. As I slowly turned around I saw two of them looking at me from the edge of a large toyon, with their characteristic \ufb01erce gaze (they have disconcertingly white irises, ringed with a blood maroon outer iris). The same presumed pair I had seen over a year ago, they were no longer concerned with me, and dropped into a very mature poison oak patch, skulking and gobbling up seeds as they went along, exactly as they are supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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References: ZEISS amabassador Catherine Hamilton describing her experiences observing Wrentits at Eaton Cayon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":1923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[933,935],"tags":[975,624,937,969,970,972,973,974],"topics":[20],"yst_prominent_words":[53,54,209,224],"class_list":["post-1921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destination","category-community1","tag-ambassador","tag-zeiss","tag-nature-observation","tag-catherine-hamilton","tag-hamilton","tag-wrentit","tag-eaton-canyon","tag-destination","topics-north-america"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Catherine Hamilton","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/author\/catherinehamilton\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/Wrentit_01-600x566.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Destination<\/a>","Community<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Destination<\/span>","Community<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["ambassador<\/a>","ZEISS<\/a>","nature observation<\/a>","Catherine Hamilton<\/a>","Hamilton<\/a>","Wrentit<\/a>","Eaton Canyon<\/a>","destination<\/a>"],"unlinked":["ambassador<\/span>","ZEISS<\/span>","nature observation<\/span>","Catherine Hamilton<\/span>","Hamilton<\/span>","Wrentit<\/span>","Eaton Canyon<\/span>","destination<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 5 years ago","modified":"Updated 5 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on April 22, 2021","modified":"Updated on April 22, 2021"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on April 22, 2021 10:44 am","modified":"Updated on April 22, 2021 5:39 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Allen, Larry W., Kimball L. Garrett, and Mark C. Wimer. 2016. Los Angeles County Breeding Bird Atlas. Los Angeles Audubon Society, Los Angeles, CA.
Johnson, N.K. (1972c). Origin and di\ufb00erentiation of the avifauna of the Channel Islands, CA. Condor 74: 295-315
Erickson, M.M. (1938). Territory, annual cycle, and numbers in a population of wren-tits (Chamaea fasciata). University of California publ. Zool. 42:247-334.
Geupel, G.R. and G. Ballard (2020). Wrentit (Chamaea fasciata), Version 1.0 in Birds of the World (P.G. Rodewald, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.
https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2173\/bow.wrenti.01<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"