Marsh Wrens Singing & Nest-building
With legs spread as far apart as avianly possible to clasp nearby bulrushes and cattails, Marsh Wrens are heard far more often than seen. Their distinctive reedy, gurgling song is like no other. John J. Audubon compared its “song, if song I may call it… [to]… the grating of a rusty hinge.” While admittedly it’s not the most musical song, it is varied (males learn 50-200 song types) and is sung with gusto continuously throughout the day and sometimes night in order to stake out territory and to attract a mate.
Equally impressive as the number and constancy of their songs is the number of nests male Marsh Wrens build — at least a half dozen dummy nests for every breeding nest used by a female. Why expend this kind of energy? Several theories exist: the dummy nests serve as shelter for newly fledged young, as replacement nests if breeding nest is destroyed, as a decoy for predators, and possibly the number of nests may serve as an indicator of the male’s vigor or quality of his territory, or both.
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