Image of Marsh Wren

Description:

Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris) 18 October 2015: Walked about the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center (CCNHC) in Denton, Texas and it was toward the end of the hike that I decided to take one more turn toward the prairie area of the nature preserve. Next to the administrative building at the nature preserve amid the tall and fast-drying grasses at the site there was a small bird making loud calls about something. When we approached it turned out that this bird was none other than Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris) which we had not observed before. It is a migratory bird at this time of the year at this site. We tried taking more pics but in the end we came up short and ended up with the one that appears in this posted observation. We thank Greg W. Lasley for generously confirming our ID of Marsh Wren prior to its being posted. Marsh Wren’s range is strictly that of a North American bird and its permanent range extends along the Pacific Coast from southern California north into British Columbia, in the area of Canada’s extreme southwestern corner that hugs the US-Canada border. This permanent range occurs too on the East Coast of the United States along the Atlantic Ocean and later the Gulf of Mexico as the range extends from its northern reaches in Massachusetts and Rhode Island southward as the coastline goes eventually reaching and wrapping itself around the entire length of Florida’s peninsula and thence west past Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and into the Texas Gulf Coast coastline up to around the area of South Texas where Nueces County is located. According to the range map by Audubon for Marsh Wren, which differs a bit from that published online by All About Birds, the only other permanent range for Marsh Wren is along the length of the Colorado River as it flows south toward the US-Mexico border encompassing the states of Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona. The All About Birds range map has a wide swath of the permanent range in the Inter-mountain West including range in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Montana, for example, and excludes the permanent range that the Audubon range map cites for most of the Pacific Coast in southern and central California. Regardless of these differences between these two significant range maps for Marsh Wren, it is clear that its permanent range follows the eastern, southeastern and western coastlines of the United States and this permanent range barely enters into Canada as indicated. With the possible exception of the Marsh Wren following the Colorado River through Sonora, Mexico, on its way toward its eventual union with the Gulf of California, the permanent range of the Marsh Wren does not appear to extend into Mexico proper or beyond. Throughout the continental United States Marsh Wren has a presence either as a migratory, permanent, breeding, or wintering bird. Marsh Wren uses Canada primarily as breeding range where it may be common or uncommon locally and this Canadian breeding range extends from one coast to the other across the continent. And the breeding range in the United States is interspersed between New England, the Great Lakes area close to the shorelines of these great bodies of fresh water, the Upper Midwest states like Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as to the west in states like Montana, Wyoming, and the eastern areas of Oregon and Washington. To the south all of Mexico provides a wintering range for Marsh Wren except for its most southeastern states and the most southern areas of its southwestern states. Marsh Wren has a definite wintering presence in Mexico. Because of its extensive range across North America from one coast to the next, Marsh Wren is a definite authentic resident of the Western Hemisphere. CCNHC is administered by the City of Denton, Texas. Sources: “Marsh Wren,” Audubon, range map, photographs, resource links, description, accessed 11.20.15, https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/marsh-wren “Marsh Wren,” All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, range map, description, resource links, photographs, accessed 11.20.15, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Marsh_Wren/id