WREN, the popular name for birds of the Passerine family Troglodytidae, of which the best known is Troglodytes troglo dytes, the little brown bird with its vigorous song and its short tail cocked on high, that braves the winter of the British islands, and even of the European continent, and figures largely in folk lore. In St. Kilda, isolation has brought about the evolution of a distinct sub-species.
The better known forms in the United States are the house wren, common in the eastern states but in bad odour for its egg eating proclivities; the winter-wren, remarkable for its resonant and brilliant song ; the Carolina wren, also a fine singer ; and the marsh-wren, besides the cactus-wrens and the canon-wrens of the western States.
Wrens have the bill slender and arched : their food consists of insects, larvae and spiders, but they will also take any small crea tures, such as worms and snails, and occasionally eat seeds. The note is shrill. The nest is usually a domed structure of ferns, grass, moss and leaves, lined with hair or feathers, and from three to nine eggs are produced, in most of the species white.
The headquarters of the wrens are in tropical America, but they reach Greenland in the north and the Falkland Islands in the south. Some genera are confined to the hills of tropical Asia, but Troglo dytes, the best known, ranges over North and South America, Asia and Europe.
The Troglodytidae by no means contain all the birds to which the name "wren" is applied. Several of the Sylviidae bear it, especially the beautiful little golden-crested wren (see GOLD CREST), and the group forming the genus Phylloscopus (see WARBLER), habitual summer visitants. The largest P. sibilatrix, is usually called the wood-wren. The willow-wren P. trochilus, is in many parts of Great Britain the commonest summer bird, and is the most generally dispersed. The third species, P. collybita, is the chiffchaff.