THE CACTUS WREN
by
Walter L. Meagher
Photos by Wayne Colony
Few birds appeal to sentiment as strongly as the wren. There is a cheery quickness in its movements, a pert and sassy disposition. You can see a Cactus Wren in El Charco – male and female wear the same brown robes, share the duties of parenting, defend a territory together, and mate for life – atop or diving into shrubbery along the pathways leading from the Visitors’ Center to the cortina.
Brown is the color of autumn leaves, of dried grass and of wrens; however, the Cactus Wren’s prominent white eyebrow says, “I want to be seen, even if most of my body is camouflaged.” Bird nests are not easily detected, but the visibility of the Cactus Wren nest, a woven cone of natural fibers secured to a spiny arm of a cholla cactus, boasts its security. We see the nest more often than the bird, for each pair builds two to three decoys, doing their best to confound the world and dissuade whipsnakes from stealing nestlings. The Cactus Wren has its own adaptation to semi-arid scrubland: it gets all the moisture it needs from the food it eats, including the juicy fruits of the cholla.