Carolina Wren

About the Carolina Wren

Pound for pound the loudest thing in the yard. The Carolina Wren's ringing teakettle-teakettle-teakettle goes off year-round, in any weather, from a bird you could hide in your fist - per ounce, one of the loudest songbirds on the continent. Only the male sings the teakettle, but his mate adds a rolling chatter, and pairs often duet.

Warm rufous above with a bold white eyebrow and a cocked tail, the Carolina Wren is a year-round resident across Texas and a fixture of brushy yards. Pairs mate for life and patrol their territory together through every season, poking through brush piles, flower pots, grills, and garages - and nesting, famously, in all of them. Hanging ferns, coat pockets, and boots left on the porch have all hosted broods.

They are insect hunters above all, working bark and leaf litter for spiders, caterpillars, and beetles, with some seed and suet taken in winter. Hard freezes knock their numbers back at the northern edge of the range, but mild-winter Texas keeps them thick.

The photograph usually offers itself at dawn, when the male mounts a fence post to shout at the sun - tail down, head back, whole body in it.