Proud parents ...Cactus Wrens Alta Vicente trail Palos Verdes Peninsula Southern California -139
"...Among the most clever of these cactus spine-dodgers is the desert cactus wren, which can perch upon the branches or dive into a tree of the awful Bigelow's cholla with perfect impunity. In fact, the cactus wren finds the company of cactuses so congenial that she not only spends a great deal of her time foraging for insects among their branches, but chooses to rear her family in a nest embraced and fortified by their needles. I doubt if there is a member of the wren family that better provides for the protection of her home.
Those who are used to associating the word "wren" with the tiny, sprightly, and vivacious bird of the Eastern States, with its happy, jocund, and joyous song, will find it hard to see how the cactus wren can be called a wren at all, for he is such a different fellow from the bird of their acquaintance. On the whole he is rather a coarse-looking bird with no prepossessing characters as to either form or color. Comparatively, he is rather a good-sized bird, having a length of eight inches from bill to tail-tip. The general color-tone is brownish gray with whitish under-parts prominently speckled with round and linear black spots, especially on the throat and fore part of the breast. The bill, like that of the rock wrens, is slightly bent. The song is an odd one and hardly musical, consisting generally of only a coarse prolonged clatter or low "chut-chut-chut." It is especially noticeable in the spring during the nesting season. The males are then unusually quarrelsome, hot-tempered, irascible fellows, pursuing one another in flight over long distances, scolding and giving vent to their peppery tempers and jealousies in shrill, angry, jaylike notes of warning."
Denizens Of The Desert
Edmund C Jaeger
Proud parents ...Cactus Wrens Alta Vicente trail Palos Verdes Peninsula Southern California -139
"...Among the most clever of these cactus spine-dodgers is the desert cactus wren, which can perch upon the branches or dive into a tree of the awful Bigelow's cholla with perfect impunity. In fact, the cactus wren finds the company of cactuses so congenial that she not only spends a great deal of her time foraging for insects among their branches, but chooses to rear her family in a nest embraced and fortified by their needles. I doubt if there is a member of the wren family that better provides for the protection of her home.
Those who are used to associating the word "wren" with the tiny, sprightly, and vivacious bird of the Eastern States, with its happy, jocund, and joyous song, will find it hard to see how the cactus wren can be called a wren at all, for he is such a different fellow from the bird of their acquaintance. On the whole he is rather a coarse-looking bird with no prepossessing characters as to either form or color. Comparatively, he is rather a good-sized bird, having a length of eight inches from bill to tail-tip. The general color-tone is brownish gray with whitish under-parts prominently speckled with round and linear black spots, especially on the throat and fore part of the breast. The bill, like that of the rock wrens, is slightly bent. The song is an odd one and hardly musical, consisting generally of only a coarse prolonged clatter or low "chut-chut-chut." It is especially noticeable in the spring during the nesting season. The males are then unusually quarrelsome, hot-tempered, irascible fellows, pursuing one another in flight over long distances, scolding and giving vent to their peppery tempers and jealousies in shrill, angry, jaylike notes of warning."
Denizens Of The Desert
Edmund C Jaeger