EASTERN WINTER WREN 155 



wildness; and again, at close range we hear the soft whisper song, a 

 subdued rendering of the same trills and cadences ; we cannot place the 

 singer, the music seems to come from everywhere, but we stand 

 amazed and thrilled. 



Bradford Torrey (1885) writes: "The great distinction of the win- 

 ter wren's melody is its marked rhythm and accent, which give it a 

 martial, fife-like character. Note tumbles over note in the true wren 

 manner, and the strain comes to an end so suddenly that for the first 

 few times you are likely to think that the bird has been interrupted. 

 * * * The song is intrinsically one of the most beautiful." 



Rev. J. H. Langille (1884) refers to it: "Copious, rapid, prolonged 

 and penetrating, having a great variety of the sweetest tones, and 

 uttered in a rising and falling or finely undulating melody, from every 

 region of these 'dim isles' this song calls forth the sweetest woodland 

 echo. It seems as if the very atmosphere became resonant. I stand 

 entranced and amazed, my very soul vibrating to this gushing melody, 

 which seems at once expressive of the wildest joy and the tenderest 

 sadness." 



Aretas A. Saunders (1929b) analyzes the song as follows : "There is 

 usually a long trill in the middle of it, which is followed by a short 

 note of lower pitch. I found that the majority of the songs were of 

 three parts, the first ending with the trill and its short note; the 

 second was a repetition of the first ; and the third, a sort of termination 

 in which there were usually no trills. The notes follow each other so 

 rapidly that it is hard to catch them all, but there are often 30 to 50 

 notes, in addition to the trills, in a single song." 



Albert R. Brand (1935 and 1938) made careful studies of the songs 

 of many birds by recording bird sound on motion-picture film, giving 

 us much valuable information on the subject. He found, on his two 

 records of the winter wren's song, that the length of the song varied 

 from 6.72 to 7.17 seconds, as against less than 2.5 seconds for the song 

 of the song sparrow; the wren's song contained from 106 to 113 

 separate notes, compared with 35 or 36 for the sparrow. "Two songs 

 of the Winter Wren studied under the microscope show that an average 

 of 16 distinct notes with a corresponding number of distinct stops 

 were produced each second" (1935). He also found that the wren's 

 song is very high in frequency, or pitch, exceeded only by the grass- 

 hopper sparrow and a few other birds, mostly warblers. The grass- 

 hopper sparrow, with one of the highest notes recorded, has an average 

 frequency of 8,600 cycles, or vibrations, per second and a maximum of 

 9,500. The winter wren has an average frequency of 5,000 cycles and a 

 maximum of 8,775 in its highest note. Out of some 55 birds that he 

 lists only 12 have a higher average frequency than the winter wren. 



The active song period of the winter wren extends through spring 

 and through much of summer, up to the first week in August or later. 



