The Voice

Of all the birds that return in spring, and of all the birds that sing and trill and call with the exurberance only spring can inspire, the most exuberant of all has to be wrens. This morning, I awoke to a wren singing away. This is the third year I can remember the wren being in the backyard. Not a bad way to wake up - hearing the rolling trills of this tiny singer.

It nests in a birdhouse hanging from the neighbor's clothesline. For being such a tiny bird, it is one of the feistiest. This afternoon, a male house sparrow was trying to take over the birdhouse. The sparrow is almost twice as large as the wren, but size didn't matter. The wren kept dive-bombing the sparrow. And even when the sparrow flew away from the house, the wren followed it and chased it until the bird flew out of the yard. What determination! And what beautiful singing!