Illustration © David Allen Sibley.
Learn more about these drawings.
Text © Kenn Kaufman, adapted from
Lives of North American Birds
Photo: Brian E. Small/Vireo
Winter Wren
Troglodytes hiemalis
| Conservation status | Still widespread and common. |
|---|---|
| Family | Wrens |
| Habitat | Woodland underbrush; conifer forests (summer). Breeds mostly in moist coniferous forest with an understory of dense thickets, often close to water. Winters in very dense low growth in woods, especially along streambanks or among tangles, brushpiles, and fallen logs. |
Photo Gallery
Feeding Behavior
Usually forages very low among dense vegetation, searching for insects among foliage, on twigs and trunks, and on ground. When feeding low along streambanks, may take items from water's surface.
Eggs
5-6, sometimes 4-7. White, with reddish brown dots often concentrated toward larger end. Incubation is by female, about 14-16 days. Young: Probably both parents feed nestlings. Young leave the nest about 19 days after hatching.
Young
Probably both parents feed nestlings. Young leave the nest about 19 days after hatching.
Diet
Mostly insects. Feeds on a wide variety of insects, including many beetles, caterpillars, true bugs, ants, small wasps, and many others. Also eats many spiders, plus some millipedes and snails. Occasionally may eat tiny fish. Also sometimes eats berries, perhaps mainly in fall and winter.
Nesting
Male sings in spring to defend territory and attract a mate. In courtship, male perches near female, with wings half-opened and fluttering, tail spread and moving from side to side, while he sings or calls. Male may have more than one mate. Nest site is in any kind of natural cavity close to the ground (lower than about 6'), including holes among upturned roots of downed trees, cavities in rotten stumps, old woodpecker holes, crevices among rocks, holes in streambanks, sometimes under porches of cabins. Within cavity, both sexes help build nest of grass, weeds, moss, rootlets, lined with animal hair and feathers. Male may also build several unlined "dummy" nests.
Download Our Bird Guide App
- All Seasons - Common
- All Seasons - Uncommon
- Breeding - Common
- Breeding - Uncommon
- Winter - Common
- Winter - Uncommon
- Migration - Common
- Migration - Uncommon
Songs and Calls
A high-pitched, varied, and rapid series of musical trills and chatters; call note an explosive kit! or kit-kit!How climate change could affect this bird's range
In the broadest and most detailed study of its kind, Audubon scientists have used hundreds of thousands of citizen-science observations and sophisticated climate models to predict how birds in the U.S. and Canada will react to climate change.
Read more: climate.audubon.org
Each map is a visual guide to where a particular bird species may find the climate conditions it needs to survive in the future. We call this the bird’s “climatic range.”
The colors indicate the season in which the bird may find suitable conditions— blue for winter, yellow for summer (breeding), and green for where they overlap (indicating their presence year-round).
The darker the shaded area, the more likely it is the bird species will find suitable climate conditions to survive there.
The outline of the approximate current range for each season remains fixed in each frame, allowing you to compare how the range will expand, contract, or shift in the future.
The first frame of the animation shows where the bird can find a suitable climate today (based on data from 2000). The next three frames predict where this bird’s suitable climate may shift in the future—one frame each for 2020, 2050, and 2080.
You can play or pause the animation with the orange button in the lower left, or select an individual frame to study by clicking on its year.
