Troglodytes hiemalis
Order Passeriformes
Family Troglodytidae
Adult.— Upper parts deep brown; line over eye pale brown or light tawny; wings and tail crossed with narrow dark bars; under parts brownish or tawny, lighter than upper parts, but barred with blackish and white, and darker than in following species; tail less than 1 in. long.
Nest, on the ground, often under the roots of an overturned tree.
Eggs, often six or seven, white, speckled with reddish-brown.
The Winter Wren is a common summer resident of the Canadian Zone (see map), a rare winter visitant in southern New England, and a not uncommon winter visitant in the lower Hudson Valley. It passes north in April, and returns in September and early October, but it is rarer as a migrant than its abundance in the north leads one to expect. In winter and on migration it frequents brush heaps, stone walls, or fallen trees, particularly along the banks of woodland streams. It seldom sings while migrating. It breeds rarely in deep-wooded swamps on the upland of Worcester and Berkshire counties in Massachusetts, and in southern Vermont and New Hampshire, but as soon as one enters the damp forests of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, the Catskills, and the higher mountains of northern New York and New England, the song of the Winter Wren becomes one of the characteristic summer sounds; it is as if the bird had been uncorked, Thoreau said, and the song left running.
The song is long and high, in two equally balanced parts, the first ending in a contralto trill, the second in a very high trill; after a little interval the song is repeated or answered. The Wren sings either from some high dead stub, or from the mossy logs over which it creeps in search of food. When alarmed on the breeding-ground, the bird utters a sound like the syllables crrrrip, and at other times a sharp chick, very like a note of the Song Sparrow, but quickly repeated. It has also a fashion of bobbing or curtsying when observed. When searching for food, it seems often to skip, rather than to fly, from one log to the next.
To distinguish a Winter Wren from a House Wren is a difficult matter. Except in September, however, the two will rarely occur together. The House Wren is nearly an inch longer, and much of the additional length is in the tail; its under parts are lighter, and it is likely even in the fall to utter its grating scolding-note. The Winter Wren utters a chick of surprise, and generally bobs or curtsies; this bobbing action will identify it at once. The Winter Wren has a light line over the eye, which the House Wren lacks, but the line is often rather indistinct, and especially difficult to see clearly on such an active and secretive bird.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)