Though numbers vary from year to year, this is usually a fairly common bird in the built-up areas of southern Ontario, much appreciated by some for its cheerful song and activity, deplored by others when it takes over bird houses built for other species.

If several bird boxes are available, the male will generally fill them all with sticks, while the female selects one to use for raising the family.

They winter in the southern USA and in Mexico.

S. Charles Kendeigh, who made a special study of this species, showed that most had to migrate to avoid overnight starvation in our long winter nights.

This is the most plain of our wrens, lacking the back stripes of the marsh wrens, the white tip to the outer tail feathers of the Bewick’s Wren and the barred flanks of the Winter Wren: a small, brown, very active little bird.

Its song is a musical, bubbling chatter: “zhuh, whu-wee-wee-wah-wah-wah”.