ALTHOUGH THEY FLIT through verses of poetry and sing like there’s no tomorrow, let’s be honest about wrens. Hardly flashy in plumage, they are too often dismissed as LBBs (Little Brown Birds).
Except for the fairywrens of Australia and New Guinea, of course, which flash incandescent azure, violet, and rust, but which are unrelated to the wrens most of us encounter in our backyards and beyond.
Although I include a montage of those fairywrens for you below, this post features a prosaic Bewick’s Wren investigating a nest cavity along the Rio Grande. It is a worthy wren today (every day, actually) because at long last I bring you some housekeeping — assorted news and ideas from the frontiers of nature, including human nature (my nature as well), before I return to reporting from the vanguard of springtime here in the Northern Hemisphere. Along the way in this post, you’ll find additional wren charisma and shoutouts to a few Substack writers I’ve come to admire and therefore you might as well.
How I Read (and Avoid the Phone)
I am by nature easily distracted. So in order to manage my time and spend more of it outside and with people and the dog I love, I do not read news or essays on my phone — not even most of the three dozen Substack writers I follow (10 of whom with paid subscriptions). So in addition to avoiding social media, here’s my strategy for liberating myself from the phone and computer (including when I write) for more time and attention in nature:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Chasing Nature to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.