72 Microseasons of the Pacific Northwest

The Pacific wren (Troglodytes pacificus) is the Pacific Northwest's smallest songbird, weighing barely more than a dime, yet it produces one of the most complex and voluminous songs of any bird in North America. A year-round resident of old-growth and mature conifer forest along the coast and in the Cascades, the Pacific wren is most intensively present — and most active — in the very forest conditions that define the rainy Pacific Northwest December: dense, dark, wet, moss-carpeted old growth. Male Pacific wrens hold territories in the understory year-round and continue to sing irregularly even in December, their songs carrying remarkably far in the muffled acoustics of a rain-soaked forest. The song is a cascading, burbling torrent of trills and high notes — one of the most complex vocalizations relative to body size of any bird on Earth, lasting 5–8 seconds and containing more than 30 distinct notes. Even a brief song burst in a December Hoh rain forest — with rain pattering on sword ferns, alder leaves turning to black lace on the ground, and the Hoh River roaring nearby — feels like an assertion of life in the most emphatic way. Pacific wrens are notoriously difficult to see — they creep through root tangles and fallen log systems like mice, cocking their stubby tails. The best approach is to stand still near a patch of downed logs and root masses along a forest trail and wait. The Hoh Rain Forest visitor area trails, the Quinault Loop Trail, the old-growth groves of the Elwha Valley, and the fern-floor cathedral forests along BC's West Coast Trail all harbor high densities. In winter, when other birds have mostly quieted, the wren's song is the dominant voice of the forest.