Walking through the wood, a tiny speck of brown flew past low to the ground. About ten meters away it disappeared into a clump of ferns. It struck me that I had seen a lot of wrens of late and decided to investigate this one further. Slowly and quietly approaching the clump, I saw no sign whatsoever of fleeing bird. Puzzled, I began to doubt what I had seen wondering if it had actually been a mouse skipping across the surface. I called over my dog (Dylan) as he has a nose that he readily pokes into grassy tufts sniffing out voles. As anticipated, he need little encouragement to thrust his snout deep into the ferns. Three times he did this, and I thought the bird must have flown unseen, when suddenly out and away it flew. That a wren should hide so tenaciously in such a small bit of cover really surprised me.
The abundance of wrens is no doubt a consequence of our mild winters. The morning I saw the wren, also saw the first settling snow I had seen here for two years. It barely covered and ground and disappeared in very short time.
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