![\"Winter](\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/wiwrs1str-ajs-2008-06-20-t27.jpg\" "\\"wiwrs1str-ajs-2008-06-20-t27\\"")
<\/a>It was a wet and foggy day in April.\u00a0 I was standing in a damp little nook in dense woods, long before the first leaves would even think about opening, weeks before most migrating birds would get within a thousand miles of southeast South Dakota, listening to a cascade of musical notes that seemed like it would never end.\u00a0 It was echoing off the trees and the mossy banks, coming from somewhere tantalizingly close — but from exactly where, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out.\u00a0 After I stood there for perhaps ten minutes, I finally spotted it: a tiny brown bird singing from a pile of leafless brush, fifteen feet in front of me in plain sight.\u00a0 My first Winter Wren.<\/p>\n
By some strange coincidence, the details of that experience almost perfectly match the details of my first encounter with Pacific Wren, when, on another wet and foggy day in April, I spent another ten minutes trying to find the amazing vocalist hidden among the dense, damp vegetation, this time on the slopes of Skinner Butte in Eugene, Oregon.\u00a0 At the time I had little idea I was seeing a different bird than the one I knew from the east.\u00a0 The song was familiar, or so I thought — unmistakable, really.<\/p>\n
To this day, in the field, I have some difficulty separating the songs of the two forms (which may be separate species soon<\/a>, for those of you just tuning in).\u00a0 Both are remarkable vocalists, with long-running musical strings of jumbled high-pitched notes and trills:<\/p>\n<\/a>