Wrendition

A wren gives a rendition of his powerful rattling song while perched on a near vertical stem of a hazel bush.  This tiny bird produces the most extraordinarily loud sound for his size, if he was scaled up to the size of turkey and his decibels increased proportionately, we would surely be deafened.  Not only is he loud but he is quick, the number of notes that he spills out is mesmerising.

In the UK we only have the one species, whereas in the Bay area of California they have twelve. But what the UK wrens lack in diversity of species, they make up for in their adaptability to different habitats. They are in our gardens and lowland woods, but also everywhere between there and high upland oakwoods and scree slopes on our mountains, down from there to our coasts and out to the most remote islands, St Kilda boasting its own race of slightly bigger birds.

I hear this bird in this place nearly every morning, yet rarely see him as he skulks and sings in deep cover.  Today, I paused while Gus had a rest and I managed to get a few photos of him in the low morning light.

It was to be a coolish overcast day, that ended with what has become that rarest of environmental phenomena - rain. Who would have thought after the wet of Autumn and Winter that Spring would turn out so dry?