Tuesday, January 4th, 2022
There’s a quieter “contact” call that they make while they’re skulking about the underbrush. If you learn to recognize it you’ll occasionally notice them coming up to check you out for a moment before they disappear back into the bushes.
Lance Benner has a good example of what that sounds like here: https://xeno-canto.org/296924
XC296924 Wrentit (Chamaea fasciata)
The one in the blurry, rainy photo in my checklist was particularly curious. He or she definitely seemed to be wondering what possessed me to be on the trail in those conditions.
Fun fact: Wrentits are “highly philopatric.” They spend their whole lives within a breeding territory a few hundred yards across, typically not far from where they themselves were raised. I remember when I learned that, how it added to my sense of loss for the chaparral I’d grown up birding that had been turned into endless tract housing. What happened to those wrentits? 😞
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/672508051902889984.
