Subject: A winter wren moment
Date: Dec 22 09:44:48 2003
From: Rob Sandelin - floriferous at msn.com


I have the good fortune to live with a large greenbelt surrounding my home
and I regularly explore and poke around the trails. Winter wrens are
commonly seen all year in our forest. Yesterday there was a sunbreak in the
afternoon and I went for a wander. I stopped and sat on a fallen tree and
just listened to the sounds around me for several minutes. A winter wren
came gamboling out of the fernage, darting here and there, poking into root
ball crevasses and thoroughly inspecting the undersides of sword fern
leaves. As it came close to me, it paused nearby, tilted its head to take my
measure, and then, to my delight, thoroughly inspected me. It started by
landing on my shoe and poking about at the end of my pant leg. I thought for
one moment it was going to try to crawl up inside, which would have blown my
cover as I am sure I could not remain still with a bird in my pants.
Fortunately, the bird then flew up and perched on my pants, (outside)
hanging vertical for a second just below my knee, then it flew up and landed
on my pocket of my shirt.

--Have you ever held really really still?-- try it, it is much harder to do
than you think.

At this point I realized that I had stopped breathing when the wren had
landed on me, and needed some air soon, so as gently as I could I took in
some air. However, that apparently signaled to the bird that this thing was
alive, and it dove for the ferns. After a minute the bird popped back up,
landed companionly close on the tree I was sitting on, and poked around the
bark very near my hand. I hoped it would complete its previous
investigation, but it flew down and out of sight.

It was a very wonderful early Christmas present of the best sort.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com